The Hamilton County (Tenn.) school district is considering conversion of a former department store in Chattanooga into a school campus.
The Chattanooga Times Free Press reports that the district would like to renovate and remodel a former Sears at the Northgate Mall and make it a new home for Chattanooga School for the Liberal Arts.
According to renderings, the property would hold a 165,000-square-foot school building, a gymnasium, soccer field and three playgrounds. The school would be expanded to serve grades K-12 instead of just K-8.
The plan is part of "Phase Zero" of a 10-year facilities plan recommended by MGT Consulting Group to the Hamilton County school board last month.
The former 192,500-square-foot building at the mall is owned by Transformco, a company that emerged out of the bankruptcy of Sears in 2018, says Roger Puerto, who runs real estate transactions for that business.
Puerto says the property is under contract to a potential buyer, but it's not the school system. He said he doesn't know the plans of the entity that wants to buy the property or if it's working with Hamilton County Schools.
Not everyone thinks a school is the best use for the former Sears.
"For a mall that needs to resurrect itself, putting a school there won't do anything for it," says Chattanooga developer Clint Wolford.
Chattanooga School for the Liberal Arts, a K-8 magnet school, has long been promised a new home, but several previous plans and promises have fallen through.\
Its current home is a 71-year-old building that is prone to water leaks, sits on a shifting foundation, is riddled with windows that don't seal and isn't accessible to people with disabilities.
The school, built in 1949, was rated as one of the worst schools in the district in a 1999 facilities report and has again been recommended for closure in the audit completed by MGT Consulting Group over the past 18 months.
