Show Your Imagination -- Buy a School!

KELO reports over the weekend on the impending sale of the old Geddes High School. Geddes consolidated with Platte last year. The new joint district auctioned off most of its surplus property Saturday, but it's also trying to auction off the 1922 brick school building, plus a separate ag and music building, on eBay.

As I read the article, I was dismayed to read the following comment from former Geddes student Joni Blair:

It's just pretty funny. I mean, it's a school building. What else can you use it for, it's designed to be a school.

[quoted by Karla Ramaekers, "School for Sale," KELOLand.com, 2008.03.08].

What else, you ask? Oh, Joni, show some imagination. Take a look at the three old elementary schools in Madison that have all been put to new uses. Lincoln Elementary is now Living Hope Wesleyan Church. Washington Elementary is being turned into an apartment complex. And Garfield Elementary is the crown jewel of creative commercial rejuvenation, housing everything from Hope Glass Studios and Reyna's jewelry shop to secondhand furniture and dance classes (not to mention the funkiest loft home in Lake County).

You don't have to be a Vulcan to recognize there are always possibilities. It just takes a little creativity and the ability to see beyond the way things always have been to the way things could be.

That, and $60,000 gets you a 38,000-square-foot building, new plumbing, and even playground equipment... not to mention a great playground for some entrepreneur's imagination. Bidding closes Wednesday, so hop to it!