New houses from schoolhouses
Mancuso, Sam & Fuerst, J.S.
formulation) of Christian faith. In any case, those who want to sail with Simon have their course already charted for them. It is that basic Christian creed of which the two parts are tautologi-...
...a substantial number are on the Register of Historical Properties...
...Warren, Michigan...
...In short, many small conversions are the nucleus for larger de- velopments...
...These buildings are often in "recently" developed outlying areas which have matured and where birth rates have declined leaving fewer children in the neighborhood and many half- empty classrooms...
...Many of these buildings are in usable physical condition...
...New York City...
...FUERSTi$ assistant director of urban studies at Loyola University of Chicago...
...Housing developments similar to Central Grammar have been developed in Amherst, Lexington, and Boston, Massachusetts...
...Many of these older schools are of particular interest for redevelopment since they are in" conservation" neighbor- hoods and are either in a stage of arrested development or a process of gentrification...
...What do developers like about conversion...
...Indianapolis, Indiana...
...This compromise made it possible for the local housing authority to introduce a development of multi-family units with low- and moderate-income families into a gentrified area 21 September 1984:503 of young professionals with beautiful large homes and well- kept neighborhoods...
...And ninth, marketability...
...Conan the De- stroyer, and The Search for Spock, Star Trek Ill...
...New Britain, Connecticut...
...Similarly in Newtonville, Massachusetts, Sasaki and Associates successfully converted thirteen condominiums from the handsome Clarion Park school and completed the complex by building twelve additional new townhouses...
...There is usually a playground attached to the school building providing considerable open land around the built-up area...
...One of the problems that James Rydeen, a Minnesota devel- oper of such conversions, stresses is that a number of schools offered are too small to make multi-family unit conversion economical...
...Among the other restrictions imposed by Gautreaux was a virtual interdiction on new hous- ing in Black or mixed areas (at least until the lawyers were satisfied with the number built in White areas) to discontinue the practice of...
...During the last fifteen years, since the Gautreanx decision, Commonweal: 502 the typical public housing permitted in Chicago (which has all been miniscule) has been two- to six-unit developments known as scattered sites...
...Today in Chicago, this seems to be doubly true...
...In some instances, it may be that elimination of the school playground where there are no other play facilities in the neighborhood might cause hardship...
...Unfortunately, until there are changes in court rulings (or at least housing authority administrative rulings), and there is some legislative facilitation, such solutions are significantly hampered in Chicago...
...There is little question that obtaining a public housing development is infinitely easier if the land and building are already publicly owned as are these schools...
...although in spite of problems at the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA), and a lack of experience, there seems to be an administration that cares...
...But such a task requires a fundamental suspicion of the Christian tradition more than a fundamental trust in it...
...Many schools could be converted into small-family units without conversion since most units could house a couple with one or two children at the very most, avoiding the fears of inundation...
...hence also spin-offs like Gremlins ( E.T...
...Simultaneously, with this housing problem, there has been a nationwide decline in birth rates, plus enough population change to cause many elementary and some high school clos- ings...
...What may finally happen to the Catholic church or Chris- tianity is, in the long run, a trivial question...
...I Screen STRANGE BETA-FELLOWS FAMILIARITY BREEDS--& BREEDS O NE LINE quoted from a movie critic in a newspaper advertisement sums up the cinema's summer of discon- tent: "Move over, Porky's, Revenge of the Nerds is the social misfits' Rocky.'" Now it is understandable that an ad wQuld advance no claim to profundity on behalf of Nerds, but it's not too much to suppose that moviemakers still try to be original, and curious therefore that one critic, at least, believes this movie's merit lies in its resemblance to two other films...
...First, good location...
...Eight, they save time...
...With these advantages why are there not more conversions...
...School-housing conversions, however, could conceivably avoid some of the shackles with which Gautreaux has confined the city...
...Insofar as projects are private for- profit ventures, they can be conventionally financed and mar- keted as rentals or condominiums...
...Many of these conversions are now medium-priced rentals or condominiums, but clearly the question of whether to con- vert to high- or low-priced housing is a matter of social policy rather than one of architecture or economics...
...But one man's poison can be another man's meat...
...Both these "newer" and older schools provide real oppor- tunities for rehabilitation into livable housing...
...But for that, something more than angelic liberalism is required: a dose of the post-liberal devil...
...Minneapolis, Minnesota...
...More space and character are possible in converted school apartments than in typical new fiats for comparable costs...
...Perhaps the graphics of these movies can be distinguished, but their plots seem clones, or, as the robot-duplicates are termed in The Last Starfighter, beta-parmers...
...Virtually all schools converted into housing have been rented in record time...
...In most instances objections have been motivated by class or racial concerns...
...Architects and developers like Noyes and Brubaker of Perkins and Will find this kind of conversion challenging because it allows them to work with unconventional buildings, buildings with fire places, stained glass windows, interior exposed brick and the like...
...Since many closed schools amenable to housing conversion are in Black or mixed areas, they could easily fall under the Gautreaux interdiction...
...25:40...
...Lynchburg, Virginia...
...Today the point is not, as it was in Cardinal d'Ailly's time, to save Catholic Christianity at all costs, but rather to find out what it left unseen and unsaid, even if that entails letting Christianity die, as Jesus did...
...Such praise underlines the defect of most summer movies this year, an outrageous aping of previous successes, especially successes won with younger audiences...
...Sixth, preservation of landmarks...
...Second are older buildings constructed from 1880 to 1940, frequently three to five stories high...
...They were con-structed with good materials and in full compliance with build- ing codes...
...Experience throughout the country suggests that these closed schools can provide housing --even public housing --for elderly persons or small families...
...First, there are schools built since 1950, usually one or two stories high with many large windows, reasonably high ceil- ings, and all the safety precautions that cities can impose...
...Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania...
...Or, al- ternatively, as the beta-partner of the hero of The Last StarCommonweal: 504...
...Fourth, schools often evideace ingenious and imaginative design...
...Neither the suburbs nor the outlying areas simply remained bastions of single family houses...
...Most of them are very solidly built...
...How- ever, this still leaves open the question of introducing elderly persons or families of low to moderate income into these areas via subsidized housing...
...Noyes surmounted the problem of smallness in Lynchburg, Virginia, by combining two nearby school proper- ties into one development making the project economically viable...
...and Dabney Cole- man, formerly of War Games, perform down-to-earth heroics by preventing secret plans for a new bomber from being whisked out of the country in --you guessed it --an Atari tape cartridge...
...Third, good density...
...For example, John La Fata in Warren, Michigan, explains that while he "broke even" on the school-to-housing conversion of thirty-five units for the elderly he acquired in the process "for free" land worth $600,000 to $700,000 on which he built 120 two-bedroom units...
...These schools vary greatly in their state of repair, depending on their location, the care they have received, and how long they have been closed...
...The school was purchased by the Gloucester Development team for $95,000 after it had been offered to and turned down by the Gloucester Housing Authority...
...Another method of handling small schools which do not seem economically viable to develop by themselves is to build additional units on the same site...
...I would have thought that according to its own teachings the church was meant to pass away, that Christianity was made to dissolve, and that the sole purpose of theology was to help people leave the church with a good conscience...
...The housing needs of low and moderate income families are prodigious in a period of 9 percent unemployment, still very high inflation, a stalled housing industry, and a federal gov- ernment that thinks we have no significant housing shortage...
...Especially derivative are "hi-tech" movies such as Electric Dreams, where a com- puter falls in love with a beautiful musician (mixing elements of MTV with the mad machine motif from War Games...
...Tiburon and San Francisco, California...
...This translates into less interest paid by the developer...
...SAM MANCUSO is adjunct professor of history and government at Joliet Junior College and the College of St...
...I'm going nuts, I think I'm talking to a machine," the hero of Electric Dreams laments...
...It has been estimated that in the last few years there have been from 7,000 to 10,000 school closings...
...Second, the buildings are generally of sound quality...
...To some extent, the problems confronting such conversions are real...
...to do today is not to correct and reform the tradition so much as (in Heidegger's sense of the term) to "destroy" it and retrieve what it has concealed...
...Francis in Joliet...
...p ERHAPS the most publicized school-housing conversion is the Central Grammar School of Gloucester, Mas-sachusetts...
...Lake Forest, Illinois...
...J.s...
...turned nasty) or The Karate Kid (an adolescent, albeit improved, Rocky...
...FUERST & SAM MANCUS.9 N EITHER CONVENTIONAL public housing nor government subsidized housing is having much success in the United States under the current national administration nor did it under its immediate predecessors...
...The basic reason for the imitativeness is simple...
...One area in which communities have apparently softened their opposition to subsidized housing is to units for the el- derly, a direction in which most subsidized (Section 8) school-housing conversions has gone...
...The post-1950 schools are the easier to convert with their thirty-by-thirty-foot classrooms becoming a roomy one-bedroom apartment...
...9:13), and that eschatology has been dissolved into the tasks of justice and compassion (Matt...
...If the roadblocks to public housing, are to be removed, unused school property put to use, new taxes evoked, and low- and moderate-income families provided housing, these vacant schools provide the resource immediately at hand...
...The architects were Anderson, Notter, and Finegold, and the developer was Kirk Noyes, also of Glouces- ter...
...By and large rehabilitation requires more expenditures for manpower than materials...
...In addition to locational advantages, this fin de sikcle building has tall mullioned windows, lofty ceilings, wide corridors, and ample stairways and exits...
...Schools re- maining unoccupied for too long deteriorate and are van-dalized...
...These "closed" schools are of two types...
...Barring bureaucratic complications at the outset, acquisition, building and even renting time is short...
...A good many are in Black neighborhoods where population growth resulted in a batch of new schools from 1950 to 1970 and then declined, when areas lost much of their population through fires, severe housing deterioration and abandonment...
...With the limited financing available, conventional financing has predominated because of the lack of government funds, the lack of housing authority initiative and the relative reluctance of communities to accept the rezoning prerequisite to convert schools into low-moderate subsidized housing...
...The main problem with the majority of these in the outlying or suburban areas is not gconomic or architectural but psychological-political...
...Noyes says that inexpensive acquisi- tion is one of the pluses because both parties to the transaction are in the public sphere and costs are substantially lower than other alternatives...
...The development has received four national design awards, and favorable publicity in Newsweek and on C.B.S...
...One of the biggest problems faced by local housing authorities is finding sites for public housing that can be acquired without commu- nity objection...
...The site is close to downtown, to shopping and commercial areas, to the library and post office...
...In 1982-83 Senator John Heinz of Pennsylvania introduced a bill, to re-use old school buildings...
...Although a major question revolves around costs, and these vary considerably, the square foot cost of a building cheaply acquired seems to be about 15 to 20 percent lower than new apartment construction...
...The architects, moreover, incorporated tradition in their room configuration rather than destroying it -- all for $22,500 per unit (1975) with rents from $185 to $215 per month...
...ghetto public housing that previous CHA ad- ministrations had adopted since 1955...
...Gener- ally, however, such problems as open space can be solved by discussion and negotiation, particularly in outlying neighbor- hoods...
...With pro- duction costs so inflated, especially because of reliance on special effects, experiment and innovation have become pro- hibitively risky, and studios stick to sure bets at the risk of snores...
...there is community anxiety over low to moderate income families, perhaps even minorities, being introduced in the neighborhood...
...M EANWHILE THOSE who, for whatever reasons, choose not to go home to Peter might still want to consider the simple but powerful message of the Kingdom of God that was preached by the Jesus who died and remains dead: that God's future has become present (Luke 11:20), that religion has disappeared into mercy (Matt...
...From the outset, the building has proved to be an enormous success...
...In short, while the Van der Rohe slogan of modern architecture says "less is more," the Central Grammar slogan is "more for less...
...little does he know he is simply trapped in typical contemporary filmmaking: hi-tech, low-mind...
...What we need...
...Schools are usually in residential areas...
...Many older schools are architec- tural landmarks, an economically significant fact since it adds a 25 percent depreciation factor for a private developer even if the property is converted into subsidized housing...
...A TEXTBOOK SOLUTION New houses from schoolhouses J.S...
...This bill will defray 80 percent of the cost of renovating schools for public use...
...Part of the hold-up is a lack of financing models...
...Since school conversion is novel and somewhat imaginative, lenders are somewhat skit- tish...
...In neighborhoods of almost exclusively single-family dwellings, proposals to allow multi-family housing apart- ments or condos occupied by seniors or families, whether publicly or privately financed, have evoked outcries over the destruction of community character and property values...
...Seventh, they are labor intensive...
...Or take The Last Starfighter, where a teenager living in a trailer park plays video spaceship battles so well that he is dragged to another galaxy for the real thing --a medley of motifs from War Games (again), Tron, and Star Wars...
...Every objection from overburdened utilities, overcrowded schools and street traffic to insufficient police protection to serve the pe~'ceived transient character of the additional popu- lation has been hurled at the developer to halt the necessary zoning changes...
...Essentially there has been a shortage of money available for any kind of low- or moderate-income housing...
...Such an approach is like dipping up the ocean with a teaspoon...
...In Cloak and Dagger, Henry Thomas, formerly of E.T...
...All eighty units were rented in two days, there has never been a vacancy, and up to 1982 there had only been one rent increase...
...It is that basic Christian creed of which the two parts are tautologi- cal: "We believe (1) in Jesus' Christ (2) with Simon Peter...
...Fifth, low acquisition cost and a broadening of the local tax base through new residents...
...Hence sequels like Indiana Jones...
...The fact is that more than half of the units built in the Chicago suburbs from 1965 to 1975 were multi-unit developments...
Vol. 111 • September 1984 • No. 16
