Iowa City School Board Approves Putting Roosevelt Building up for Open Bid

Three years after the controversial decision to close , the building is finally close to being put up for sale by the Iowa City School District.

With a six to one vote, with Sarah Swisher voting nay, the Iowa City School Board approved a motion to put the school building up for bid after the building closes, formally ceasing to be a school at the completion of this school year.

There were final requests from members of the Roosevelt Elementary community to keep the building, to repurpose it and retain it as part of the school district, but these requests went unheeded. The decision by the board follows an exploratory process undergone by the district with input from the community, considering the value of repurposing the building as such things as a magnet school. Ultimately, the administrators decided it would be most prudent to sell the property.

The vote followed an informational meeting via Skype with lawyer Jane McAllister, of Ahlers Law Firm in Des Moines. McAllister was hired by the district to help draft the open bid language and take the school district through the process.

McAllsiter told the board that the district will have quite a bit of control in the bid process in terms of limiting what the property can be used for by potential bidders, and also when the bids need to be submitted.

She cautioned the only thing to consider is the matter of how long the board wants this process to potentially drag out.

"You really are in the driver seat all the way along here," she said.

Being in the driver seat is important as the district tries to meet members of the Roosevelt community halfway, after making the unpopular decision to first close the school, and then making the somewhat less unpopular decision to sell it.

Members of the Roosevelt Advisory Group, made up of about a dozen members of the nearby Miller Orchard Neighborhood, met with faculty last fall, requesting that if the building were to be sold, that it not be sold to a developer who would turn the property into multi family apartments or a strip mall. Limiting these uses can be built into the bidding process, McAllister said.

Iowa City school board member Jeff McGinness recommended communicating with the city of Iowa City in advance to work out a valid planning and zoning route for the property with an ending destination that would appeal to the neighborhood. He reasoned that this would at least partially assure a potential suitor possigility of a gentle zoning process.

McGinness said in this way bidders could know what they're getting into.

"Potential bidders can look at it and say, yeah, that's something I can live with," he said.

Members of the community still gave it one last shot to keep the old building within the district. Roosevelt, although centrally located, was closed for various reasons, including the inefficiencies that come with being an old building. Still, some argued that the building still could be saved, even if not as an elementary school.

Lori Enloe, former president of the Roosevelt Elementary parent teacher organization, who battled hard in an attempt to keep the school open, presented the board with a petition asking that the board either refurbish the school building and keep it in the district, or, if they did sell it, that they respect the wishes of the Roosevelt community and not sell the building for uses that wouldn't fit the community. The petition, in print and online form, had 160 signatures from the community supporting the notion.

Enloe also made one last appeal to keep the building in the district.

"The question is do we really want to sell the property that is already paid for with it being in that central location?" she asked the board. "What would be even the minimal things we could do to keep things running and find another use for the building?"

Enloe did thank the district for meeting the community part of the way by allowing them input into what the property will be. Or, more precisely, what the property will not be allowed to be.

Board member Tuyet Dorau suggested that if the district is going through with this, it should act in good haste, so the district doesn't have to bear the cost of maintaining a building it no longer plans to use.

"We don't still want to have this building next year," she said.

Iowa City Superintendent Steve Murley said now that the building's being put up for bid has been approved by the board, he will work with McAllister to add the required language that would limit what purposes it can be sold for. If these language changes are considered substancial enough, Murley said he will bring the contract back before the board for them to approve it again.

Once this process is finalized, competitive bids will be accepted for the building. Bids must be in for the property, as stipulated by the contract language, no later than Sep. 30 of this year.