New Economy Goes Olds School
By: Gretchen Cochran, 8/20/2008
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Old is New [[Economy)
School buildings used to be neighborhood focal points. But for years they’ve been vacated and demolished due to declining enrollments, pressure to build new facilities, and a lack of public support, according to
The National Trust for Historic Preservation. The Trust added the loss of neighborhood school buildings to its 2000 list of America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places.
But re-purposing old school buildings is good business, and Lansing entrepreneurs get it.
“It’s always better to re-use a building,” says Ryan Kincaid, of the
Kincaid Building Group of East Lansing. “The environmental impact is less, and the overall costs minimized.”
Ryan Henry, Kincaid’s vice president, is more direct: “The greenest building you can ever build is one already built.”
In the last four years, the Lansing School District has sold eight buildings, all for new uses. Sale of the ninth, the old Northwest Elementary near the Capital Region International Airport, should be complete soon.
Such ventures bring one-time revenue to school districts and give new life to the facility and to the neighborhood, says Steve Serkaian, spokesman for Lansing Public Schools. “We can retain our history through the exterior, while entrepreneurs are retrofitting the interiors.”
Two years ago, Neogen bought a second school, Allen Street Elementary on East Kalamazoo Street, for $300,000. [[The 55,000 sq. ft. building cost $50,000 when it was constructed in 1913.)
More than $1 million later, the company is gradually retrofitting classrooms into laboratories, says Jim Houthoofd, Neogen’s controller.
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