Location, Location, Location

In the real estate trade, the three most important factors in determining a home's value are encapsulated in the hackneyed phrase:  location, location, location.  After last night's meeting, I'm pondering whether that is true of a school's value as well.  We're still talking about building a school, and had a meeting to discuss possible locations.

The presenting committee did a good job of explaining the maps of the two tracts that are being considered as a site, and telling the back story of regulations and challenges affecting the use of those sites.  They also made an effort to "stuff" their biases--successfully, most of the time, in my estimation.  I especially appreciated the explanation of why the location discussion has been reopened.

Both sites are ten acres in size, and both are available either because of having been purchased with donated money--from Bud Helmuth's estate--or by outright donation of land.  Both are situated on the east side of north-south roads, roughly 2-3 miles apart.  Both are carved out of the NW corner of a larger tract.  One is on a dirt road 1/8 mile off US50/K61 and two adjacent railroads, and the other is on a paved road between US50 and K61 in a spot where they are separated by about a mile. At this site the railroads are 1/2 mile south.

One site is "flat as a pancake" and is in the NW corner of what is currently a wheat field, but still needs $37,000 of dirt work to be readied for a school site.  It has a one foot elevation variation within the site.  A residence is located to the north, and a huge complex of greenhouses partially wraps around the tract on the east. Across the road is a charter school in the Haven district--formerly Elreka School.  One feature of this site is the presence of an underground high-pressure gas line crossing the property.  This is the Dean Road or the Pleasantview site.

The other site has a "blue line" running across it, roughly at the center of a rectangular tract with a short end bordering the road.  By definition, a blue line is a waterway that is dry 99% of the time.  It's currently part of 80 acres of CRP (Conservation Reserve Program) land, which means that it was enrolled in a government land conservation program that paid farmers to take highly erodible land out of production by planting it to native grasses.  That site would need $87,000 worth of dirt work, according to one quote.  The site includes an eight foot elevation variation from the highest point to the lowest point.  A very small irregularly-shaped "patch" along one side is in the flood plain.  There are no regulatory barriers to installing a culvert across the blue line.  To the south is a set of farm buildings, but it is no longer a working farm.  To the north is a tilled field.  A public grade school in the Haven district is located one-half mile away, in the town of Partridge.  This is the Moyer or the Mast site.

I prayed for the meeting at various times during the day yesterday.  Some time during the day I recalled a picture I had seen during a time when flooding was threatening a Mennonite school in Oregon.  From the picture, I understood what this school must have done--erected a greenhouse-like structure to be used as a gym.  That idea struck fire with me as a possible option for us, if a gym is determined to be necessary.  

I get a fat catalog and many smaller catalogs every year from Grower's Supply.  Farm Tek carries many of the same products and the two business names are either actually under the same ownership or are closely associated in some other way.  In those catalogs I've seen a lot of creative uses for greenhouse-like structures.  Some are glazed with semi-rigid  materials and others with flexible material.  The semi-rigid glazing is more durable and more expensive.  The flexible plastic is assumed to need replacing after a certain number of years because of deterioration from ultraviolet rays. Sometimes the ends are closed in with wood or metal, to allow for more substantial framing for entry doors, ventilation fans, etc.

What do I know about greenhouses?

--My grandmother's funeral was inside a greenhouse, in December, in Iowa.  The only uncomfortable thing about that situation was the backless benches we sat on.

--I worked in a greenhouse business for several seasons.  It was always bright and comfortable there, even on cold, cloudy days.  In both of the above cases, the temperatures were routinely kept comfortable for plants, and thus were comfortable for people as well.

--We have a small freestanding 10 x 10 "plastic" greenhouse now, and earlier, at the Trail West place, we built a larger (12 x 30?) greenhouse as a lean-to on the front of a shed-roof structure.  The roof was made of Lexan, a semi-rigid material, and the sides were mostly made of recycled windows.  While we lived elsewhere the sides have fallen into disrepair, but the roof is still in reasonably good shape.

--In years past, I've spent a lot of time poring over a Stuppy catalog--a commercial greenhouse supplier out of Kansas City.  In short, I was very familiar at that time with what is available in the trade.  Purchasing one of their buildings was always too much money for us to spend, though.  The Grower's Supply and Farm Tek catalogs have offerings similar to Stuppy, but feature more diversity in materials and applications for the structures.

--A cutflower grower from Oklahoma loves her Atlas greenhouses, which she selected specifically because of their solid construction, and thus more ideal for withstanding the winds at her site.  She built the first greenhouse herself, with help from another greenhouse owner from Texas.  I heard her speak on the subject.

There's definitely a lot I don't know about greenhouses, but what I do know factors into my interest in pursuing this as a "gym" possibility.  Here are some of the reasons why I'm interested:

--Construction costs would be far less than a more traditional structure made of wood or metal.

--Construction could utilize volunteer labor.

--High clearance (for playing volleyball, etc.) can be obtained with far less structural strength and materials cost than is necessary for heavier construction.

--If the structure were not needed at some point in the future, it could be dismantled, moved elsewhere, and re-purposed.

--It would always be light and bright during the school day.

--On sunny days, the solar heat gain would make supplemental heating unnecessary.  Kansas typically has sunny winters.  I like how this would let us take full advantage of one of our geographic location's good features, at little or very reasonable cost. The school year also coincides very neatly with the time of year in which solar heat gain is most needed and appreciated.

--The gym's use would be self-limiting in that on the warmest days, it would be too hot to be inviting.  Those are the times when children should play outside anyway.  (I've been told that the grade school teachers are not proponents of building a gym because they want the default recess activity to be outside play.)

--Bringing in outside air is a given in a greenhouse because of the necessity for cooling, even on cold days, if it's sunny outside.  I like how much more fresh air this would provide for exercising students than merely walking down the hall to a space within a traditional building structure.

--I assume that a "greenhouse gym" would be constructed on a concrete pad.  If needed, the pad could be constructed in such a way that it would also accommodate a more traditional building in the future.  While I don't see floor heating as being very necessary for a greenhouse gym, the tubing needed for floor heat could be installed with an eye to the future.  The concrete mass serves as a huge heat sink during the day and keeps the temperature from dropping precipitously at night.

--Some gatherings could happen inside a greenhouse.  School programs in the evening might be a bit of a stretch, but smaller events during the day could quite easily be accommodated.

--A greenhouse gym could provide an indoor walking space for adults.  That would be true, of course, for any gym, but allowing free access to a structure outside the main school building would be less problematic than to do so in a gym enclosed within a classroom building.

--Playing noises would be more isolated in a structure not inside a classroom building.  

--It would avoid massive "overbuild," which is a concern I've heard repeatedly from people who are thoughtful about matters of stewardship and the real and "image" hazards of affluence.

--In either location, a greenhouse would fit with one of the principles that architects (at least the ones I celebrate) routinely consider:   fitting the building to the site.  Wind and sun issues would be similar in both places.  In the Pleasantview site, this structure would be exactly like many nearby structures.  In the Mast  location, its image as an agricultural endeavor would fit in with the purposes of all the land around it.

I'll write more later about thoughts triggered during the meeting.