Olympia Schools eye city’s Yelm Highway site for future school
The immediate uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic has not stopped the Olympia School District and Olympia Parks, Arts and Recreation Department from planning for the future.
The two groups have spent the past few months kicking around the idea of a property swap that would transfer the city-owned land at 3323 Yelm Highway SE to the school district, which would look to site a new high school there sometime in the next 10-15 years.
Discussions to this point have been purely hypothetical, according to OPARD Director Paul Simmons. Jennifer Priddy, assistant superintendent of business and capital projects for the Olympia Schools, deemed them “pretty theoretical.”
Still, residents get their first chance to weigh in during a joint Zoom meeting between the two agencies at 6 p.m. Monday. The Olympia City Council is not expected to take up the issue until early 2021 at the earliest.
“There are a lot of different options on the table, but I think where we’re at as far as developing a master plan for the park, we want to know first off if this is something the public wants to do,” Simmons said.
“I think the most important thing is that sometimes, people assume a decision has been made. At this point, no decision has been made. I don’t think there is a right or wrong answer here. There are benefits both to the school district and the city for doing it, as well as for not doing it.”
Olympia purchased the 22-acre Spooners Berry Farm property in 2018 with the intention of developing it into a multi-use outdoor recreation complex. More than half of the space is currently occupied by strawberry fields, with a gravel parking lot taking up most of the rest.
Preliminary design concepts for the proposed park released last winter included running trails, dog parks, community gardens and various sport courts. The city parks system needs athletic fields to support recreational soccer and football, four of which would be located at the Yelm Highway location.
The city and school district already share resources for a number of arts and recreation programs, something that would likely extend to a new high school campus. Simmons said there would still be room for the athletic fields even if a high school is built on the property.
The balance of single-family and multi-family development in the southeast portion of Olympia will dictate the timeline for when additional school buildings are needed, Priddy said.
“We know that area of Olympia and Thurston County is growing very quickly and that the schools on that side of town will eventually not have enough capacity,” Priddy said. “We want to use the opportunity to explore whether it is a mutually advantageous step to begin planning for a school in the next decade.”
Should discussions turn more serious in the coming months, the two sides will have to determine what combination of land assets and financial compensation makes the most sense for each side. The Olympia City Council and school board would have to sign off on any proposal.
“We haven’t really gotten to that point,” Simmons said.
This story was originally published November 14, 2020 at 5:45 AM.