Last Updated on July 24, 2022, 3:07 PM | Published: July 23, 2022
OKLAHOMA CITY (Free Press) — One neighbor of the old, unused Oklahoma City Public Schools administration building is accusing the district of “demolition by neglect.” After years of efforts to develop a new use for the building, in disgust, she now wants it torn down because it’s a danger to the neighborhood.
Another neighbor says that the district “walked away” from a deal that could have made the 1921 classic a point of beauty and pride for the district and the neighborhood. They said they were “gutted” by the decision.
Another says that a recent fire in the building — the only one on record with the fire department — happened July 7, a full two weeks later after neighbors met with Superintendent Sean McDaniel and showed him photos of how the building was unsecured and open to stray people coming and going. He said he would get right on it, the neighbors recalled.
There is a feeling of betrayal even though district officials insists that they do want the district to be a good neighbor.
And, now, Oklahoma City Public Schools is proceeding with plans to demolish its former Roosevelt Junior High and later administration buidling (Roosevelt/admin) at 900 N. Klein after a unanimous vote by the Board of Education Monday.
The move adds more uncertainty for neighbors nearby and the entire Metro Park neighborhood that extends to the west.
What could have been?
As we visited with leaders of the Metro Park Neighborhood Association there was a common thread that ran through their comments: They thought the district was taking the right approach with the idea to sell the historic building to an organization that would repurpose it in compatible ways to the neighborhood.
To learn more about the qualities of the building at the move-out June 2017:
For a while district officials and neighbors together believed the strongest idea for the old administration building was to go with an idea for a boutique hotel called “The Theodore” where the impressive auditorium would be used for community events and the character of the building built to be a junior high school would be leveraged as a strength.
It wasn’t a new or far-fetched idea. The former Douglass High School/Page Woodson Middle School building at 600 N. High has been successfully converted to The Douglass apartments and the auditorium used for community events. And, the Page-Woodson development surrounding it races forward.
The Oklahoma City Urban Renewal Authority (OCURA) had carefully arranged the set of agreements that produced a successful project there and now the district had engaged them to do similar negotiating in this instance. There was no reason to believe that they could not do the same with this project.
This is a copy made by one of the neighbors of the pitch book given to them by Carpathia and the McNellies Group proposing in detail what they could do with the existing structure using it’s character to their advantage in developing a boutique hotel.
Theodore-Pitch-BookletOrganic part of the neighborhood
The buildings that the district now plans to demolish did not just happen to be built in proximity to the neighborhood. They were built to be a part of, and serve, the neighborhood.
Homes built in a three-year period along with the building at 900 N. Klein — first used as Roosevelt Junior High and later the administration building — are still in use today, some still occupied by their current owners. Property records show that houses across the street to the west and north were built around 1919 and 1920. The old administration building was built in 1921.
And on one of the other sides across the street sits the original elementary school that served that neighborhood at the same time that the junior high served several surrounding neighborhoods.
Disappointment
There is deep disappointment within the neighborhood at the eventual decision to hang onto the property and then demolish the old building, leaving a literal hole on the east end of the neighborhood, a real estate question mark that could soften the value of the homes left behind.
Terri Hoersch, one of the neighbors who lives across the street from the property, was especially strong in her condemnation of the ways in which the district decided to just leave the building unsecured until there was a 3-alarm fire in the auditorium area around 2:30 a.m. on July 7.
In the two years since the district stopped trying to find a good sale arrangement that would repurpose the building Hoersch said it has been unsecured and as such, a haven for people who are either trying to find shelter or those who were looking for an unregulated place to engage in crimes.
“Really, the building cannot be sold right now. It is not the building it was two years ago,” said Hoersch. “It is demolition by neglect. And I want it torn down as quickly as possible. There is no reviving this building.”
Sam Frederickson has been heavily involved in leadership of the Metro Park Neighborhood Association and lives only about a block away from the old administration building.
He told us that his grandmother went to junior high in that building back in the 1930s and has special feeling about the connection of the building to the neighborhood.
Frederickson said that a building that was the source of problems in the neighborhood burned and the neighborhood became “real quiet.” But, then, the same kind of activity started to gravitate back because the Roosevelt/admin building was not secured and could be easily entered at several points.
He said that he was hopeful when their meeting with McDaniel resulted in a commitment to secure the building.
Frederickson shared the PDF of his presentation to McDaniel in that meeting:
Sam-F.-PDF-of-presi-to-McD-900-N-KleinIn a chance meeting on the street in front of the building, we got to ask McDaniel about the timing of securing the building after the fire. He said that there was a time lag between getting to a contract to have the building secured and actually getting that done.
Christina Brightwell Thompson told us that she was “gutted” by the decision to demolish the building that she had worked so hard with others to convert to a use complimentary of the “renaissance” that the neighborhood was starting to experience.
“The McNellies group (yes, same as the bar) had an amazing pitch and they were local,” wrote Brightwell Thompson in a message. “Ultimately they won out. They made it through inspections and then the deal dissolved.”
The disappointment was due to a strong sense the neighbors have that Metro Park is undergoing some stabilizing changes from active community building and organization.
“I think that hotel project could have sped up a renaissance that is underway south of 10th. It will still happen, just a lot slower. It’s hard to be patient,” said Brightwell Thompson.
District changes
In a phone call with Free Press, OKCPS Chief of Operations Scott Randal pointed to a series of events that created much more complexity since the building at 900 N. Klein was emptied in 2017 and declared a surplus by the district:
- Change of superintendents
- Change of school board members
- Pandemic lockdown time lag
- Rising real estate values
- District leaders’ change of ideas about the value of the property part way through the process
All of that list created not just minor changes but a sea change for this project in particular.
Randal said that the decision to not go further with the idea of a sale was because of new ideas about needs the district might have for the spot in the future and that it wouldn’t be much of a deal for the district.
Hiring the Oklahoma City Urban Renewal Authority (OCURA) to negotiate a deal that would insure the new owners would live up to their plans meant an expense as a part of the sale, which figured in to their calculations on whether to sell, explained Randal.
“Once we actually paid OCURA, once we actually netted our proceeds out … in terms of the valuation and what we would receive in return … it wouldn’t have been a great deal for the district, I would say financially,” said Randal.
But, then a new superintendent (McDaniel) with new ideas about future bond authorizations meant moving forward with property acquisition instead of retreating as was the case with the previous superintendent, Aurora Lora.
Discussions about future bond authorizations meant that the footprint of 900 N. Klein started becoming more important than the building that was on it.
“And so, talking about planning and having to acquire property in the core of Oklahoma City, and the cost of that, we would have been upside down on a deal if we would have sold that property and then had to turn around and say, okay, now buy an equivalent amount of property of that same size of that same acreage,” explained Randal. ” We would have lost money on that deal.”
Randal explained that with the new superintendent and the new make-up of the Board, the interest was in being invested in the “core of the city” which meant seeing 900 N. Klein in a whole new light.
“And so, we made a decision, again, collectively, that the best thing we could do financially for our students — financially for our district — was to retain that property,” said Randal.
That rationale makes sense to district officials but it’s a difficult one for neighbors to accept.
Founder, publisher, and editor of Oklahoma City Free Press. Brett continues to contribute reports and photography to this site as he runs the business.
