Page Woodson School

[Pete]

Plans are moving forward to renovate the historic Page Woodson school into housing as part of a large mixed-use development on Oklahoma City's near northeast side.

Ron Bradshaw of Colony Partners has submitted detailed plans to the Oklahoma City Urban Renewal Authority (OCURA) which will be considered for approval at their meeting this Wednesday.

The plans call for converting the three-level school into 68 apartments and for a new four-level building to be built immediately to the east, which will also have 68 living units. All 136 apartments will be for lower-income tenants.

Bradshaw is working with the Oklahoma Housing Finance Authority which will set rents at approximately 60-70% of current market rates. Tenants will be required to meet income guidelines set by the authority.

The school was built in 1910 and is on the National Register of Historic Places. In order to receive redevelopment tax credits, the building will need to be strictly preserved. For example, all windows will be replaced but must closely resemble the originals. The exterior will be cleaned but largely not altered.

Bradshaw told OKCTalk that the corridors and stairways will be refurbished but kept as original as possible. The classrooms will not be subdivided in any way; they will merely be re-purposed as living units within their existing walls.

The building, which has been vacant for more than two decades, includes a beautiful and historic 900-seat auditorium, complete with balcony. Bradshaw intends to restore the facility to is original grandeur and to make it available to the community.

The gym will be partitioned into apartments but the dilapidated swimming pool – at the southeast corner of the building and not original to the school – will be demolished. The lobby will feature memorabilia from the school's history and that of the African American community in Oklahoma City.

Solomon Layton, who also designed the Oklahoma state capitol building, was the architect of the school which was the original location for Douglas High School.

Smith Dahlia Architects of Atlanta is overseeing the school renovation while Butzer Architects of Oklahoma City is heading up design on the new construction.

Bradshaw hopes to start clean-up and asbestos removal very soon, with renovation to start sometime around August. About a month later, the new structure will commence. The goal is to complete the entire project by mid to late 2016.

In addition the the school property which Bradshaw purchased from OKC Public Schools in 2013, his group also was awarded the right to develop five surrounding blocks owned by OCURA as part of an RFP process.

Bradshaw's plan is to develop all five blocks into market-rate housing and commercial space. The development will happen in a rolling fashion with the goal of full completion by 2018.