OKC district reconsiders plans for empty building
A building purchased nearly three years ago by Oklahoma City Public Schools to house the district’s administrative offices is back in play.
The school board voted Wednesday to take the former Central National Bank Building at 615 N Classen off the market, renovate it and relocate as many as 220 employees within two years. In June, the board had voted to designate the empty building as surplus property.
“That’s what the building was originally for,” member Carrie Coppernoll Jacobs said. “And I’m glad that that’s what we’re going to use it for.”
The district will use between $8 million and $10 million in Tax Increment Finance dollars to offset the renovation costs, said Scott Randall, chief operations officer.
“We’re restarting a project that we put on hold because of the budget crisis,” Randall said.
Plans call for an auditorium,
a multipurpose room and conference rooms, he added.
District administrators say their current location, a former middle school at NW 8 and Klein Avenue, is in disrepair and would be too expensive to fix and bring up to modern standards.
Employees from several departments, including curriculum, language and cultural services, and early childhood education, have moved out of the administration building and into several district schools.
About 160 workers remain at the school system’s current site, officials said.
“The longer that we wait the worse that the situation will get at the administration building now,” Coppernoll Jacobs said. “It’s one of the most inefficient, if not the most inefficient buildings in the district. It’s falling apart.”