Little Rock School District leaders are pursuing new buyers for the former Woodruff Early Childhood Education Center after learning that Moses Tucker Real Estate Inc. is exercising its option to withdraw from the purchase of the structure at 3010 Seventh St.
“Unfortunately, we weren’t able to make the costs work,” Ray Nolan of Moses Tucker said Friday about his company’s plan to convert the 1911-built school into apartments and community meeting and recreation space. “The construction costs we were getting back were just too high. We tried to squeeze it and squeeze it and make it happen, right up to the last minute, but just couldn’t do it.”
Superintendent Mike Poore said the district has received notice of the company’s intent to back away from closing on the deal made last summer.
“It was an option that seemed to be a win, win, win for them, for the community and for us,” Poore said about the planned sale. “I’m disappointed that it’s not going to work, and it puts us into a little bit of a tight situation because of some upcoming deadlines we have on ourselves.”
Those deadlines include a legally required Feb. 1 submission to the state Department of Education of the district’s unused and underused school properties.
Recent changes in state law make vacant or underused school properties more available than in the past to operators of open-enrollment charter schools for their use. Open-enrollment charter schools and traditional school districts compete for students and for state funding.
There are already two former Little Rock district schools — Mitchell Elementary and Garland Elementary — being readied for opening next year as open-enrollment charter schools.
Little Rock district leaders have reached out in recent days to a Miami businessman who had made an offer on the Woodruff site at the same time as Moses Tucker last spring, Poore said. The district has also received two other inquiries about the property. Those have been referred to the district’s real estate agent, Stuart Mackey.
“Of course, we are trying to brainstorm any other creative solutions that we can come up with just to have as many options as possible,” Poore said. “We want to find one that not only works for the district but also — and this is very important to me — one that works for the community.”
As plans are developed for the Woodruff campus, Poore said, it is his intent to share those with the school’s neighborhood.
School district leaders permanently closed three schools — Woodruff, Franklin Elementary and Hamilton Learning Academy — and altered the use of a fourth — Wilson Elementary — at the end of the 2016-17 school year as a way to cut district operating expenses. Woodruff and Franklin were put up for sale.
MT Properties, which is also known as Moses Tucker Real Estate Inc., last April proposed a $700,000 purchase of the Woodruff campus to convert the school into 23 one-to-three bedroom apartments that would range in size from 700 to 1,400 square feet.
Additionally, the Moses Tucker plan called for reserving 2,000 to 3,000 square feet of the first level of the building as event space for use by local nonprofit organizations as well as by the nearby University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences and Arkansas Children’s Hospital. A community swimming pool and a small park space on the north side of the property were also included in the site plan.
Moses Tucker has a reputation for revitalizing older structures, particularly downtown buildings.
“It is a beautiful building,” Nolan said, “and it is right up our alley — we love restoring those old and historic, cool buildings. But it was tough to work with and the costs got really, really high to the point that we couldn’t make it work.”
Act 542, passed by lawmakers earlier this year, gives charter school operators a greater right of first access to the properties.
A traditional district must submit to the state a list of its unused and under-used properties and its plans — if they exist then— to reuse, renovate or demolish those buildings as part of a specific project. The state Public School Academic Facilities and Transportation Division by March 1 must publish a list on its website identifying the properties that are unused or underused and available for lease or purchase for no more than fair market value to any public charter school located within a school district’s boundaries.
The act also gives a charter school the right of first refusal to purchase or lease an underused or vacant property for up to two years after the date the public school facility was last used for academics.
If there is more than one open-enrollment public charter school located within the boundaries of a school district, the right of first refusal shall be available to the open-enrollment public charter school according to a priority list determined by the charter authorizer after a review of the comparative status and educational needs of the charter schools.
While the sale of Woodruff has fallen through, the Little Rock district’s $895,000 sale of the Franklin School to the Community Mental Health Centers of Arkansas Inc. has closed. The district is not selling the Hamilton Academy.