More than a year after closing 15 school campuses to deal with a budget deficit and declining enrollment, San Antonio Independent School District has a plan to repurpose some of those buildings.
The district announced Tuesday that it’s seeking proposals to lease and repurpose five vacant school properties to “serve community needs.”
Available properties include:
- Brewer – 906 Merida St.
- Douglass – 318 Martin Luther King Drive
- Gonzales – 518 E. Magnolia Ave.
- Lamar – 201 Parland Place
- Pickett – 1931 E. Houston St.
Three of those properties — Douglass, Gonzales and Lamar — were school campuses closed through the SAISD’s “rightsizing” efforts last year.
It’s unclear why the district chose to start repurposing efforts with only those three buildings. SAISD employees and board members are not allowed to comment on the repurposing plan during the “request for proposal” process, district spokesperson Laura Short told the Report.
The other two properties, Brewer and Pickett, are former school campuses that closed several years ago and have since served temporary purposes.
Brewer Academy was an elementary school until it closed in 2015. It later served as a special education charter school, and was home of the district’s alternative education placement center during the 2024-25 school year, which is now located at the Ramiro P. Estrada Center.
The Pickett property, known as the Pickett Family Center, stopped operating as a school in 2017 when SAISD decided to run two district departments out of the building, and later leased it to Garden City Church. The church has leased SAISD buildings for several years and now runs out of the district’s Bowden Academy.
At least three of the available properties are more than 100 years old, and Douglass saw its most recent renovation projects in 2006.
Interested parties have until Oct. 17 to submit proposals describing how they would repurpose the vacant buildings. The primary goal, an SAISD spokesperson said, is to “transform these underutilized spaces” to serve both community and educational interests.
More specifically, proposals have to be in sync with the community feedback SAISD collected earlier this year, have viable business plans and benefit the community directly.
Results from a repurposing interest survey show respondents, mostly SAISD students and parents, prefer the closed buildings be renovated for fine arts programming, early childhood education services and green spaces.
Other options included mental health services, affordable housing for teachers and district staff and other community health services.
After reviewing proposals, the district will invite a short list of applicants to interview and/or present for a selection committee between the end of October and early November. The committee is tasked with taking recommendations to the school board for final approval.
