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Schools teach recycling on many levels today. Students learn the importance of reusing newspapers and plastics in preserving resources and minimizing waste, and they practice recycling each time they place something in the recycling bin. However, some school districts are recycling their own communities' buildings and finding new life for them as schools. Such large-scale recycling has many benefits for communities and their districts.
The most obvious benefit of an adaptive reuse project-one where a building retains its original basic structural elements but is used for a different purpose-is that it takes what might be a community eyesore and transforms it into a much-needed, quality school. And reusing an unused structure saves materials that would have been lost if the unwanted building was demolished and rebuilt for another purpose.
The most obvious benefit is that it takes what might be a community eyesore and transforms it into a much-needed, quality school.
An abandoned building within a community can make a better school site than another site on the outskirts of district lines, since it's easier to transport students to school and many can even walk to school. And placing a school in a central location can preserve neighborhoods and breathe life into an area that may have been deteriorating. The old school buildings those vacated when the new school was created from adaptive reuse of another building can themselves sometimes be reused for other purposes, such as condominiums or art centers.
While not a trend, adaptive reuse is a viable and valuable option for schools, according to Molly Smith, associate vice president of NANA Consulting Services, an educational facilities planning consultant firm based in Mesa, Ariz. "Districts shouldn't be so scared about undertaking these projects," Smith says. "They just need to be sure they have the right experts to help them, make sure the building isn't a fire hazard, and they need to get creative about giving developers of the land a tax credit, like they do in Arizona. A lot of districts just get in the mode of looking for land instead of looking at the resources within their communities."
Districts save cash and time in adaptive reuse of buildings.
Districts control hundreds of millions of dollars, and their decisions can make an impact, Smith notes. Looking for empty buildings could be an answer. "They can be recycling and regenerating and creating energy within their communities with what they do," she adds. "Districts can also be very wasteful by going out and getting a whole new site."
Although most often it's urban districts which typically have no available or sufficient land that undertake adaptive reuse projects, this development provides a great option for new schools. Various retail facilities such as vacant strip malls, "big-box" stores and supermarkets are options, as are office buildings, manufacturing facilities and even U.S. post offices. The building must be structurally sound, properly zoned and in a secure location. Often a building intended for a commercial purpose does not meet the more stringent code requirements of a school, so the building must be renovated in such a way that it meets fire codes and becomes handicapped accessible.
But reusing a building as a school isn't always much less expensive than new construction. The primary advantage of adaptive reuse projects is their time benefits. Reusing buildings can save months of construction time since they don't require demolishing an existing structure and building anew, or clearing land for a building. And for districts seeing a great increase in student enrollment, this can be the biggest benefit of all, Smith says.
However, even though adaptive reuse projects are beneficial, districts and their architects will encounter challenges. For instance, the site location may be far from ideal. An empty retail store might be next to businesses like banks and grocery stores, so the public would be close to school grounds during school hours. It's often a big challenge to maximize daylight in cavernous big-box stores, with natural lighting only around the perimeter. Parts of older buildings may be unusable, extending the time of the project. And it's often a challenge to equip an older building with the necessary wiring to accommodate the computers and other technology that schools need.
