Virginia Caranci’s view of Louisville Middle School unfolds like a flickering newsreel, starting with her grandfather’s hand in its 1939 birth as a Depression-era public works project.
The blond brick evokes days when the building also served as the high school.
Here she is being crowned homecoming queen of 1950 in a gymnasium filled with red-and-black crepe paper and a backbeat of swing music.
In these halls she meets her future husband. On this football field, both parents gaze proudly on the homecoming coronations of two daughters.
So when plans for a much-needed expansion and modernization threatened to change the face of the building, Caranci and some others cried foul in this mining town turned bustling bedroom community.
But then, passions usually do run high when the interests of school districts, historic preservationists, environmentalists and residents converge.
Debate over aging or empty school buildings long regarded as community cornerstones recently has roiled Louisville and Boulder — and might soon surface in Denver.
“All we’re asking,” said Caranci, a member of the Louisville Historical Commission, “is to keep the facade of the building, some way, somehow, so that people at least have that part of it to remember.”
Of course, Caranci’s historical touchstone is another neighbor’s eyesore, a dull edifice standing in the way of a 21st-century facility.
“To some extent, you’ve just got to get over it,” said Jennifer Boucher-Reid, 39, who has three children under age 5 who might one day attend the school. “I understand that things from a long time ago are important, but you have to have a little sense about it.”
Tight bonds to schools
As student populations shift and the harsh realities of education finance leave little on the table to upgrade facilities — and sometimes dictate that they be closed altogether — school buildings become objects of civic skirmishes.
In the Boulder Valley School District, conflict over three properties — two renovations and one proposed redevelopment — has underscored the tight bonds between locals and their school buildings.
Those spats might foreshadow what lies ahead in Denver, where a massive reform plan will shutter eight elementary schools. Real estate sales could pour cash into the district’s till. But redevelopment also could change neighborhood dynamics — for better or worse.
The Denver schools — Remington, Smedley, Del Pueblo, Whiteman, Fallis, Mitchell, Wyman and Hallett — were casualties of declining enrollment. Their closures will save the district an estimated $3.5 million a year.
Emotional pleas to save some of the schools failed. But administrators have vowed to pay close attention to neighborhood voices as they decide what to do with the eight properties.
“We recognize that it’s a delicate topic,” said a DPS spokesman, Alex Sanchez. “So we want to be sure and not make decisions without engaging school-specific communities.”
Effects of a closing
Although school closings can be jolting to neighborhoods, they also can provide economic infusion not seen in decades, said Ken Schroeppel, an urban planner for Matrix Design Group who tracks core-city projects on his website, .
“Elementary schools tend to be located in the heart of a community,” he said. “It’s an opportunity to introduce retail to the interior of a neighborhood — a coffee shop or neighborhood-scale retail where prior to that time, there was no good place for it to fit.”
The closing of Stevens Elementary in the Congress Park neighborhood caused huge controversy in the early 1990s, when neighbors who had rallied support for a bond issue felt betrayed when their own school was shut down and sold.
Charles Nash, who has redeveloped three Denver Public Schools properties — including Stevens, which he transformed into a 23-unit condo project — said community buy-in is so important that he goes door to door seeking feedback.
“In every case, I do a very thorough feasibility study to make sure the neighborhood is not going to be upset and to be sure they know what my impact will be,” Nash said.
One of Denver schools that will close, Smedley Elementary in northwest Denver, already has been designated a historic landmark. Denver Public Schools periodically reviews its buildings for historic status and, if a property qualifies, the Denver landmark commission retains some say in any renovation or redevelopment.
Concerns in Louisville
Preservation issues aren’t always spelled out so clearly.
In Boulder Valley, where the average age of school buildings is 44 years, a nearly $300 million bond issue in 2006 has powered significant renovations — including those at Louisville and Casey middle schools, where architectural issues have rankled some.
“We don’t want to sound callous or indifferent to historical preservation, but our primary obligation is the education of our students,” said Briggs Gamblin, spokesman for the Boulder Valley district.
Last week, planners continued to listen to concerns about the renovation in fast-growing Louisville, where almost half the population has arrived since 1990.
“As citizens, we don’t have a lot of faith that decisions are being made within the context of Louisville and its history,” said Heather Lewis of the town’s Historic Preservation Commission. She would like designers to take another look at preserving the middle school.
But proponents of the current plan point out that time spent mulling over more options could ultimately cause some elements to be scaled back due to rising costs.
“Historic preservation in this day of limited resources means we have to make hard choices,” said Joe Alper, an 11-year Louisville resident who has a seventh-grader at Louisville Middle. “You really have to make the argument that something is truly historic, not just old or full of memories.”
The renovation plan for Casey, which opened in 1924, has roiled some residents on two counts. Although a design compromise will leave two building facades intact with new construction behind them, that alternative isn’t true historical preservation and might not be the most environmentally sound choice, critics say.
Taking into account the energy required to demolish an older structure, they argue that often the greenest buildings are the ones already built.
James Hewat, a Boulder historic preservation planner and parent who served on the Design Advisory Team, said he learned a lot about the difficulty balancing educational, environmental and historical concerns — but wishes more time was spent exploring the feasibility of keeping Casey intact.
“I’ve learned a lot about all the pressures, the things a school needs to deliver,” he said. “It’s pretty hard to get them all.”
Development looms
When the construction dust finally settles, at least those communities will still have schools.
Critics have emerged in force to contest the proposed redevelopment of Boulder’s Washington Elementary School, which opened in 1904 and closed in 2003 because of low enrollment.
After the city passed on the property, the school district struck a deal with a developer for $3.9 million — money the district would earmark for capital improvements.
But opposition has challenged Boulder-based Wonderland Hill Development Co.’s proposed project, which includes co-housing units where residents share some common spaces, plus commercial space and detached homes. The Washington School Neighborhood Association mobilized a petition drive that gathered more than 7,000 signatures to block zoning — enough to bring the project to a temporary halt.
Spokesman John Gless said the proposed project tries to cram too much on the 3-acre site. And though the school is closed, the playground and adjoining fields still provide the equivalent of a “pocket park” where kids play softball and soccer.
Gless, a planning consultant who lives in Fort Collins, grew up across the street from the school in a house where his parents still live. He figures that between the classroom and playground he might have spent more time on the Washington property than almost anyone.
“I don’t know that it gives me an emotional attachment,” he says, “but it does give me a highly developed sense of place for what it means, what that space means for that neighborhood.”
Wonderland maintains that the project density is consistent with other Boulder neighborhoods — and necessary to met the property’s hefty price tag. Wonderland says it has tried to deal reasonably with neighbors’ concerns as talks continue toward an April 8 sale date.
Finding motivations
But a process that modernizes or utterly transforms old schools, however well-intentioned, almost inevitably ignites passions tinged with mutual distrust.
“It remains to be seen how ingrained people are in their point of view, and what the real ulterior motives are,” said Terri Furman, director of sales and marketing for Wonderland. “Is it just to stop the project? Or to find a compromise?”
“Somebody,” Gless said, “has to blink.”
Kevin Simpson: 303-954-1739 or ksimpson@denverpost.com
