Group seeks buyer for old Kelliher School

I first started at the Bemidji (Minn.) Pioneer as an intern in the summer of 1996. That would begin six years as a news reporter, sports reporter and copy editor for a small, six-day-per-week daily newspaper in northern Minnesota. I wrote a large range of stories from multiple beats, to features to sports, my favorite being the coverage of the Red Lake Reservation High School basketball team named the Warriors. Here is a collection of my stories from my time at the Pioneer.

March 19, 1997

By Devlyn Brooks

Staff Writer

Old school buildings litter the Minnesota landscape -- leftover memories of days when rural communities were vibrant, supported by agriculture and logging industries.

When farm and logging families dwindle, the rural community shrinks and the school becomes costly to run, so the Legislature consolidates the district with another. But the school building itself remains, sometimes finding a second life in a commercial venture, but more than likely, falling into disrepair and being demolished years later.

The story is all too familiar to Daryl Latterell, Nick Berg, Richard Skoe and Dick Florhaug -- all who are Kelliher residents and members of the North Beltrami Development Corp. However, the four of them, in addition to four other NBDC members, do not want to see the story repeated in Kelliher.

NBDC has been authorized by the Kelliher School Board to help find a buyer for the old, three-building school complex that will be left vacant when the school district moves into its new $9 million building this fall.

However, according to a 1993 study conducted by a Grant County Minnesota Extension Service educator, it may be facing an uphill battle.

Peg Knutson, the educator who has since relocated to the Hennepin County office, says there are empty school buildings all over the state that have never found a second life, and even the few successful community attempts to reuse the buildings have struggled.

Knutson, who studied more than 10 successful redevelopments of abandoned school buildings, started the study when Grant County faced having three school buildings vacated in a short period of time.

There were several themes discovered, she said:

• A community has to get interested in filling the building immediately after it is vacated because if it sits too long, it becomes too costly to rehabilitate.

• Condemnation and consolidation were the two most common reasons for school buildings being vacated.

• A school district should sell the building to some kind of non-profit corporation, and let them find a buyer.

"It was rarely a school district that did something with the building. The best thing the school can do is sell the old building to a development corporation for a $1," Knutson said. "Schools are in the business of educating -- not economic development."

Of all the success stories she studied, Knutson said the old school which was redeveloped into a small town mall in Gully was the most successful, and probably the most creative was the use of the old school in Grand Rapids.

"The Grand Rapids school building is a celebration instead of a ghost," she said of the building, which was developed into a Judy Garland museum.