One week after city of Lake Oswego leaders made their pitch to library and parks and recreation boards as to why morphing the current Lake Grove Elementary School into a community center would be a generational opportunity, parents and other school affiliates chanted “save Lake Grove” along Southwest Boones Ferry Road in protest of the idea.
The Lake Oswego School District is mulling a quartet of options for the building — which was built in 1949 — including a rebuild or repurposing it to house administrative operations and a community transition program. However, the option city leaders have championed would convert the school into a community center that would house library, parks and recreation and district facilities. The city has discussed the idea of rebuilding or replacing the current library on Fourth Street (as well as adding a second library location) because it is too small (1.1 acres compared to the 9.4-acre Lake Grove site), programming is limited due to its size and it isn’t centrally located for the bulk of the city’s population, among other reasons.
“We are at about 50% of the library that we need for a typical library of a community of our size,” City Manager Martha Bennett said during the joint work session between the Library Advisory Board and the Parks, Recreation and Natural Resources Advisory Board Wednesday, April 17.
The city had considered adding a second library in addition to the current location but Bennett said at the meeting that the city can’t afford to operate two libraries simultaneously.
Some Lake Grove parents don’t like the idea of eliminating what they consider to be a community hub and haven’t appreciated what they felt has been a dismissive tone from city leaders. In turn, they hosted the rally along Southwest Boones Ferry Road Wednesday, April 24.
The city’s case
During the joint work session, Mayor Joe Buck, City Councilors John Wendland and Trudy Corrigan, Bennett and other city staff extolled the virtues of the project.
The city leaders see the Lake Grove site as uniquely viable from a funding and location perspective and felt such a conversion could serve both the city and school district well.
The city is in the process of completing a number of major infrastructure projects — a new aquatic center, Rassekh Park and a new wastewater treatment plant. A couple of these projects exceeded expected costs, and the city kept its spending down in its most recent budget due in part to infrastructure funding challenges.
However, at the Lake Grove site, the city could harness a financial tool local governments use for building expensive infrastructure — urban renewal. Urban renewal collects taxes associated with increases in property values and puts them in a fund for the city to use for infrastructure projects. The Lake Grove school is already located within an existing urban renewal district — which helped fund roadway improvements along Boones Ferry Road. Bennett estimated at the meeting that urban renewal could generate $50-60 million for the project, and fund a substantial portion of it. Further, the city wouldn’t necessarily need to buy new land for the project if the district decides to go in with the city on the community center idea.
Use of urban renewal would mean the city may not have to go out for a bond to complete the project, or at least would not ask voters to approve a particularly expensive one.
Councilor John Wendland brought up the recreation and aquatic center project — opening on Stafford Road later this year — which was a collaborative effort between the district and the city — as analogous to this idea.
“The more the council talked about it, the more they got excited about it. It’s really a once-in-a-generation moment,” Buck said at the meeting.
Further, the lack of availability and high price of land in town make alternative sites scant. Bennett said the city has not found other viable locations for a community center.
“It’s the unicorn,” Bennett said of the Lake Grove site. “It’s a large enough site that it could accommodate an integrated facility including adequate parking, and it could potentially be available in the next five years.”
The project would also potentially provide the city with the opportunity to house library and parks and recreation services in the same space, and to expand programming, especially for teens and tweens.
However, city officials emphasized that this concept is not yet a plan — it is just an idea that would need backing from school district leaders and the community.
“This project, if it comes to fruition, is at least five years away. We have time to collaborate and address our hopes, dreams and aspirations and also concerns about the project,” Bennett said.
However, the city has a tentative plan for laying the groundwork on the project this year — including potentially forming an advisory committee this summer and conducting polling and financial strategy this fall.
The district, meanwhile, is considering a new construction bond proposal withg a Lake Grove project (in some form) as part of that effort. The school board’s long range planning committee will present the long-range facilities plan, which outlines the school district’s goals for the next bond cycle and beyond, to the board during a meeting Monday, May 20.
Further, the city and the district are holding a joint meeting to discuss the project at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, May 7.
What is the school district’s process?
The school district has eight elementary school properties but only seven elementary schools and has to determine future use of the extra property. The district closed Uplands Elementary School over a decade ago, along with two others schools, due to lower enrollment. Since then Uplands has served as a swing site where classes have taken place during school construction and renovation projects.
If the library project moves forward, one possibility is for Lake Grove students to shift to Uplands, but that couldn’t occur for a number of years as the district has plans to use Uplands during construction of River Grove Elementary School, the future Lake Oswego Middle School and, possibly, the rebuilding of Forest Hills Elementary School.
Along with the future of the school itself, the district is mulling leasing out some of the Lake Grove property as the school is located in a commercial zone. The former bus barn is located on the property.
Lake Grove and Forest Hills are the district’s oldest elementary schools and also in the worst condition . Lake Grove, however, has one of the highest enrollments among the elementary schools.
Mary Kay Larson, the district’s executive director of communications, emphasized that the district is a long way from making any kind of decision on the future of the Lake Grove school and added that there will be ample time for public comment and studies to determine feasibility if the school board provides direction to further assess the idea.
Why are Lake Grove parents opposed?
Parents who attended the rally worried about the removal of a walkable and centrally located place for future students to attend school. Lake Grove sits on one of the city’s main roadways, Southwest Boones Ferry Road.
“Once you take away space for kids to play, you are never going to have the opportunity to get that back,” said parent Lucas Schoen. “This school services not only some of the more affordable homes in the city, but also services a big portion of the neighborhood in between Kruse Way and Boones Ferry. If they do decide to tear down this school, the next closest school is across Boones Ferry and all the way near Country Club Road, which makes it really hard for families to commute safely and in a timely manner.”
Further, they worried about a potential rippling effect with school boundaries — families of kids enrolled in unaffected schools may need to send their kids to other schools to balance out the district’s enrollment. Larson confirmed that boundaries would shift if Lake Grove moved to Uplands and that Forest Hills Elementary School and Oak Creek Elementary School would also be affected. She emphasized that a possible boundary shift wouldn’t cause overcrowding at any of the sites.
The parents also felt that other sites would be better suited for redevelopment, like Uplands or Palisades schools.
The parents have also been a bit taken aback by the city’s effusiveness about the project and attitudes of some city leaders.
They took issue with Councilor John Wendland’s comments during the joint meeting about this being an emotional process and also felt the city leaders’ general tone was dismissive. At the joint meeting, Buck talked about the alleged tendency of Lake Oswego residents to “catastrophize” and mentioned how improvements to downtown like The Windward were vociferously opposed by some at the time, but have now become a calling card for the community. The parents also are worried the project is headed down an inevitable track.
“Part of our concern is the long-range facility planning committee has been working on this for some time. It wasn’t until they received a letter from the city manager saying, ‘This could be advantageous for both of us. You want a new admin building; we want a new community center and library’ that the tone of the conversation shifted,” Lake Grove parent Kassidee Harrison said. “I think it’s concerning that we haven't been given more information and that the tone of our feedback thus far has been discussed as that we are emotional parents and that people need to think of the broader community feedback, which is I think what we are thinking about.”
Parents said they support the idea of a community hub for library and parks and recreation services — just not at the cost of losing Lake Grove.
“I like the concept. I think the location is a little misguided in what they lose by taking out this school. I think it’s really critical that we have those services, but I think it’s at the expense of what this school offers and what the opportunity is here,” Schoen said.
Around 50 parents, students and teachers attended the rally and they received regular honks from ongoing drivers. The rally-goers said their advocacy will continue as discussions progress.
“Making our voices heard early and often was our main goal here,” Lindsay Schroeder said. “We are all just concerned community members, not emotional parents as we have been called in certain meetings. We all wanted to raise our voice.”
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