Historic school to become recreation center
For 90 years, students from west Orlando’s Holden Heights neighborhood passed through the arched doorway of the school many simply called The Grand, a historic landmark and community hub that shut its doors in June.
But the Grand Avenue School’s retirement won’t last long — to the relief of preservationists, who feared it would be torn down.
The city of Orlando plans to acquire the school from the Orange County school district this month, as part of a land swap agreement that allowed the construction of the school’s replacement, the Academic Center for Excellence in Parramore.
The Grand will become the new home for services currently offered by the city’s Downtown Recreation Complex on Parramore Avenue, which will shut down to make way for the Creative Village project.
Once renovated, the school built in 1926 will
host after-school and summer programs, a pottery studio and become the new headquarters for the Parramore Kidz Zone youth mentoring program, officials said. The city also plans to build a 900-seat gymnasium. The updates and gym are expected to cost $16 million, a city spokeswoman said.
“It’s exciting to be moving into a historic building … to be part of the process off restoring it, sustaining it into the future,” said Lisa Early, the city’s parks director. “I know that this is super meaningful to the residents of that neighborhood because they love that school.”
Raymond Cox, president of the Orange Preservation Trust, which fought to save the school, hailed the city’s plans as a “win-win” for those who value the school as historic and the community that loves it.
“It’s exactly what we would hope,” Cox said. “The fact that it’s still going to be used as a community gathering point makes it even more exciting.”
When the school closed in June, district officials were mum about its future, prompting Cox and others to worry that it could be torn down. Their concern only grew when a demolition crew tore down ancillary buildings on the school property in September.
The main building, a rare Orlando example of Mediterranean Revival architecture, has a tile-clad gable roof, stucco walls and a parapet entry with columns and arched doorways. It was declared an Orlando historic landmark in 1995, one of 47 listed by the city.
Richard Forbes, the city’s historic preservation officer, called turning the school into a recreation center a “fantastic way” of extending its life.
“It really is the heart of that area, so keeping that as a culturally significant resource is very important because that’s what people recall of the area,” Forbes said. “That’s what people will continue to recall because it gives you continuity over the generations.”
City Commissioner Samuel Ings championed saving the school. Citing the city’s $5.8 million acquisition of Constitution Green Park on the east side of downtown, he argued the city owed the same effort to save a landmark of a historically African-American west-side community.
When Orlando handed over land worth $1.6 million to the school district in 2014 for use in building the Parramore K-12 school, the district agreed to give back land roughly equal in value. Both sides have determined Grand Avenue School, appraised at $2.1 million, is close enough.
The Orange County School Board is expected to signal approval for the swap Monday, when it is slated to designate Grand Avenue School as a surplus property not needed for educational purposes. City and district officials then hope to finish the deal by month’s end.
Next, the city’s renovation plans would go before its Historic Preservation Board, likely in January or February. Officials hope to break ground by early 2019 and finish construction in summer or fall 2020.
A city spokeswoman said the Downtown Recreation Complex will stay open until the Grand Avenue School renovations are completed.
Forbes said historic buildings — built from the “very solid, very sturdy” materials of yesteryear — tend to be easy to transform. The Grand is no exception.
“This building is built in such a way that it could still be in use 100 years from now, just as it’s nearly 100 years old today,” he said.