City debates if school should be preserved

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An 89-year-old school building in Kasson is at the center of a battle between city officials and local preservationists.

Depending on who’s talking, the long-vacant Kasson Elementary School is either an underperforming property tax liability or a sound structure just waiting for a productive new use.

It faces a murky future in this town just west of Roch-ester.

In 2006, Kasson voters rejected plans to renovate the 30,000-square-foot brick-and-stone structure and convert it to city offices and a library.

The Kasson City Council subsequently voted to demolish the city-owned facility, which consists of three connected, two-story structures.

The Kasson Alliance for Restoration, a local preservation group, challenged the council’s decision in court. In May, a Dodge County District Court agreed to delay the demolition, granting an injunction in effect until February.

A trial is scheduled for Feb. 11. At that time, the court will decide whether to grant a permanent injunction or allow the city to demolish the building.

The building is one of several former schools on the Minnesota Preservation Alliance’s “most endangered” list.

Both sides believe they will prevail.

Diane O’Brien-Berge, president of the alliance, said the district court sided with her group because “the city council had no plans for the property and they didn’t have money set aside for it.”

There has been talk of building a library at the school site, but Kasson City Planner Mike Martin said the city knows that “the building has no value for us as the owner.”

Clad with a Terra Cotta exterior and covered with a clay tile roof, the building served as an elementary school until a new school building was built in the mid-1990s, according to O’Brien-Berge.

From 1996 to 2004, she said, it housed district offices, community education, alternative education classes and other activities. It has been vacant since 2004.

Those who want to preserve the building speak of it in glowing terms.

Designed by local architect Nels Jacobson, it has been a hub of activity through the years and has helped to “define and rally” the community, according to a historical review of the property prepared for the Kasson Alliance for Restoration.

“The emotional blow and the loss of community following the permanent closing and potential demolition of the beloved public school will be immense,” the April 2007 historical review stated.

But O’Brien-Berge said the building has more to offer than sentimentality. She said it could be used for anything from housing to retail space, adding that the new uses would generate tax revenue for the city.

Five different architects and engineers have toured the facility and all agreed that it’s “perfectly sound,” according to O’Brien-Berge.

“It’s a fabulous structure,” she said. “Basically, the reason to save it is as simple as that.”

As for the failed referendum, O’Brien-Berge said voters merely rejected a specific plan for the property — city offices and a library. She insists it wasn’t a green light to demolish the building.

Meanwhile, the alliance is working with the State Historic Preservation Office on a reuse study for the school and has hired a consultant to nominate it for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places.

One reuse option would convert the school to apartments, O’Brien-Berge said. The historical review cited several other examples of school-apartment conversions, including the former Nelson School in Stillwater and the Endion School in Duluth.

But Martin said a transition to apartments or retail wouldn’t work from an economic standpoint.

He said it would cost at least $2.9 million to renovate the building.

“Looking at the renovation cost estimates we have seen, if you renovate it into housing and rental units you would be looking at roughly $1,800 a month rent, which is quite a ways beyond the market in Kasson,” Martin said.

“If you want to renovate it into commercial space, you would be looking at $20 to $25 per square foot, which is more than double what other available commercial rents are.”

Kenton Spading, a Kasson Alliance for Restoration member with a background in civil engineering, said it’s not clear where the city is getting those numbers. The alliance, he said, is independently studying the economic feasibility of reusing the school.

Red Wing and other cities have shown that school-conversion projects can be successful, Spading said.

“I am trying to figure out why Red Wing worked and Kasson wouldn’t,” he said. “The city is assuming that the entire [renovation cost] would come from tax dollars, which doesn’t need to be the case.

“And we have told them that. There are lots of government grant programs, tax credit programs, lots of things that can be tapped.”

Mayor Tim Tjosaas, in a memo posted on the city’s Web site, wrote that the city expects any reuse plan to include details about how the ensuing renovation would be funded. The plan would also have to clarify who would own, operate and manage the revamped building.

So far, Tjosaas noted, preservationists have failed to meet those requirements.

“The city council feels that the site of the old school building is too valuable of a resource to just give away,” Tjosaas wrote. “It still remains our plan to build a new Kasson Public Library on that site in the near future.”

Martin said there’s been “a ton of ideas” from those who want to preserve the building. But he hastened to add that “we don’t need ideas. We need a plan. If somebody wants to come forward with a feasible plan, we would love to look at it. So far we haven’t seen one.”

O’Brien-Berge said her group has a basic reuse plan.

“What makes it difficult is that we don’t own” the building, she said. “And all communications with the city council have ended. Before we filed the injunction, we were told [by city officials] that we should communicate with them through their attorney.

“We are abiding by that certified letter. It makes it a little tough.”

Spading described the school as the most architecturally significant building in town.

“Nothing else even comes close to the imposing presence and the feeling of awe you get when you drive by or park in front of it,” he said. “If you lose that, you have a deflated balloon that’s over the town.

“I strongly believe that if the worst case happens and they demolish the school, a huge part of the heart and soul of the town evaporates forever.”

Finance and Commerce is a sister publication to the St. Paul Legal Ledger.