Nostalgia and NASCAR
Whether an old school becomes senior housing or a market-rent apartment building, “there’s a sentimental value,” says Landmark Group’s Jim Sari, who developed Randleman School Commons. “People grew up in these schools. It creates quite a few wet eyes when we reopen these places.” These past students are also often quite curious about the project. NASCAR driver Richard Petty, for example, went to Randleman, and Sari says Petty “was really invested in what his old high school would become. He was over all the time.”
Petty and everyone else who went to Randleman will be glad to know that a majority of the original hardwood floors in the building were preserved. The auditorium was completely rehabilitated and still features the upper mezzanine where students used to attend school functions. Today, though, residents use the upper mezzanine as a sitting area, where sunlight streams in through the huge windows located on the front of the old school.
Cost of Authenticity
At Bass Lofts, the architects did as much as they could to stay true to their school. They retained the terrazzo floor hallways, left the lockers in place, and kept the entrances as untouched as possible. Such authentic school touches honored the building’s past and allowed the project team to apply for historic tax credits and offset some of the expenses of Bass Lofts.
Costs are important to keep in mind, says Dennis Hertlein, principal of Atlanta‘s Surber Barber Choate & Hertlein Architects, who led the design efforts to turn Atlanta’s Bass High School into Bass Lofts. Like many schools, it had wonderful architectural and structural assets. “The abundance of very large windows and sturdy concrete frame made this a nice conversion opportunity,” Hertlein says.
But it didn’t come cheap, the architect quickly points out. “I want to dispel the ‘since-we-have-an-existing-building-the-project-will-be-cheaper’ belief. This costs as much as building something new. You get a better quality building in the end, but it costs just as much.”