Crown Hill School tenants could face big rent hikes

By Steve Clark

A cash-strapped Seattle School District is considering increasing rents or possibly selling a number of properties in the city including a former elementary school in Crown Hill now home to several non-profit educational organizations.

The district’s decision may also doom a planned green space in that neighborhood.

The Crown Hill School, a former elementary school between Holman Road Northwest and Northwest 92nd Street, is one of several Youth Family and Community Service Centers designated by the district for use supporting school-related programs. The schoolhouses several tenants including Small Faces Child Development Center, a non-profit childcare center catering to about 180 children. The development center, along with several other tenants including two dance studios, pay a subsidized rent to the district for use of the facility and the school board is now in the process of considering modifying the policy that determines that subsidy.

“The policy creates a discount for youth and family operations. The proposed change is to modify the discount,” said Ron English, deputy general counsel for the school district. The school district estimates that its typical subsidy for such centers is about 25 percent of market value. If such a discount exists for the Crown Hill School, those tenants, who now pay a combined $60,000 in rent annually, could see that figure quadruple.

“There’s no way the existing tenants could support that,” said Catherine Weatbrook, treasurer for the board of directors at Small Faces. Weatbrook said the district’s priorities had changed markedly in the last few months, in contrast with discussions last summer, where the district and Small Faces were close to an agreement that would have reaffirmed the long-term use of the facility.

“Basically they’re saying ‘we’re yanking this out from under you and we’ll get full market value or sell it to a developer,’” Weatbrook said.

English left the door on the prospect of an outright sale of the property.

“There are no plans to sell at this time. But the staff is reviewing all the schools without children…every one of those buildings.”

English said such a review might reclassify buildings like the Crown Hill School from an inventoried to non-essential status. District policy states that inventoried buildings are held while non-essential buildings can be considered for sale or long-term lease.

One real estate developer, who requested anonymity, said that the Crown Hill School property, which includes a 40,000 square foot building on 3.6 acres, could support at least 16 single family homes and some commercial property, due to its zoning designation. That developer said that conservatively, the property could fetch from $6 to $7 million in the current Crown Hill real estate market.

Other buildings in the Ballard area that could be affected by the district’s policy change include the Allen School on Phinney Ridge, and the Webster School, home to the Nordic Heritage Museum. The School District has separate agreements with each center and each of these would be reviewed by staff before a new rental rate was put into effect.

As recently as a year ago the district held discussions with Small Faces and the Seattle Parks Department about dedicating roughly 75 percent of the Crown Hill School playfield to park use, an idea that had been on the Ballard Crown Hill Neighborhood plan since 1998.

“The Crown Hill Park was a key area for a community that has very little green space,” said Rob Mattson, the City of Seattle’s Neighborhood District Coordinator for Ballard, referring to the plan.

“Although the money and the design of the park are there, we’re still waiting for the school district to give us the nod when they decide what to do with that property, “Mattson said.

The district is considering the proposal during a period of consolidation in Seattle schools. The Seattle School Board recently announced the closure of seven active schools and a number of programs. Viewlands Elementary, near Carkeek Park, is one of the schools slated for closure. The school board has recently received recommendations on several additional closures.

Crown Hill School was, until it was closed in 1979, the Crown Hill Elementary School. The school district has struggled financially recently in part because of the over capacity of buildings from an era of larger families and less costly property. The district’s high water mark, 1962, saw more than 100,000 students enrolled. Last year, there were about 46,000 students enrolled in the district.

In August, Small Faces, along with tenants from eight other organizations affected by the community service center policy, presented their case for keeping the rent subsidy intact to the school board’s finance committee. Small Faces has been at the Crown Hill School since 1980 and according to Lynn Wirta, the executive director at the facility, has been operating at capacity for several years with a waiting list of children seeking to enroll as high as 50. Demand for childcare at Crown Hill has been exacerbated with the closure this summer of the North Beach Elementary Day Care Center.

Small Faces has not received word of when a decision would be reached by the school board on the rent subsidy and the district’s English confirmed that the board has no time frame for making that decision.

Small Faces’ Weatbrook said that the open-ended delay, along with a lack of empathy from the school district, is costing the organization an opportunity to safeguard its survival.

“It’s really frustrating because we could’ve been working on something collaboratively that would let us exist,” she said.

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