As Enrollment Falls, Old Schools Find New Life as Apartments
In 2024, nearly 2,000 apartments opened in former schools. Some see the conversions as a cure for neighborhood blight. Others fear gentrification.
By Linda Jacobson | March 26, 2026This story was co-published with聽
Atlanta
In a once-thriving neighborhood in the southeast part of Atlanta, Lakewood Elementary served families who came to work at the General Motors assembly plant, a sprawling 100-acre landmark that became a path toward economic mobility for entry-level workers. At its height in the late 1970s, the plant employed as many as 5,700 people.
But by the early 鈥�90s, when Gloria Hawkins-Wynn moved into the community, signs of decline were evident. The last Chevy Caprice rolled off the assembly line in 1990, and a popular antique market at the now-defunct Lakewood Fairgrounds shut down in 2006. The closure of the elementary school two years earlier further contributed to neighborhood blight, turning the abandoned structure into a hotspot for criminal activity.
鈥淲e get prostitution. We get drug dealing. We get drive-by shootings,鈥� Hawkins-Wynn told four years ago. A neighborhood representative, she urged city leaders to turn the eyesore over to a developer.
Former students begged the city to save the school, home to some of their earliest : Dick and Jane books, dances in the auditorium, a principal named Mr. Hinkle. Still visible on the school鈥檚 deserted playground is a faded map of the United States.
鈥淧lease don鈥檛 demolish it,鈥� wrote one woman. Walking to Lakewood with her mother, who died when she was 7, is a cherished memory.
Now the old school is one of several in Atlanta It鈥檚 a transformation that is increasingly taking place across the country as city leaders and developers look to give new life to vacant buildings once bustling with students and teachers.
In 2024, nearly 2,000 apartments were built in former schools across the U.S., a record high and four times the number a year earlier, according to from RentCafe, a property search website. School-to-apartment conversions are now the fastest growing segment of a niche industry devoted to makeovers of historic spaces.
As student enrollment nationwide and more districts, including Atlanta, make the painful decision to close schools, the Lakewood project offers a glimpse of what鈥檚 to come: Seventy-four school conversion projects are already underway across the country, RentCafe鈥檚 data shows. With enrollment loss in traditional schools , districts will be left with even more surplus properties.
Renovating existing structures 鈥渙ffers a way to help those buildings continue on as community assets,鈥� said Patrice Frey, president and CEO of RePurpose Capital, a subsidiary of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
For the first time since the Great Depression, renovation projects, including historic preservation, surpassed new construction in 2022, according to the . Supply chain gridlock and 鈥渢he rapid escalation of materials costs鈥� likely contributed to the shift, Frey said.
The pandemic also played a part as parents chose charter schools or uprooted to other districts and states to find in-person learning. The rapid expansion of private school choice has also contributed to enrollment declines, school consolidations and closures.
Data from the Brookings Institution showed that between the 2018-19 and 2021-22 school years, 12% of elementary schools and 9% of middle schools lost at least one-fifth of their students. Many districts delayed closures in response to parents and generations of former students who pleaded with leaders to keep the neighborhood institutions open. Some districts, , are still putting it off.
But maintaining underenrolled schools, especially those with just a couple hundred students, can be a financial drain. The , and districts are among those that have recently announced or discussed closures. That means they鈥檒l eventually have to decide what to do with the buildings.
An earlier Atlanta project, completed in 1999, offers a preview of what鈥檚 in store for Lakewood and many other former schools. was redeveloped into Bass Lofts, a three-story structure that sits in a bohemian neighborhood known for vintage clothing stores, dive bars and record shops. Mallory Brooks, a photographer, moved into one of the units 10 years ago after relocating from Florida.
鈥淚t was the first place I looked at, and I was definitely smitten,鈥� she said. Stepping through the main entrance, 鈥測ou are transported immediately to being in a school.鈥�
Old lockers, welded shut, line the ground floor hallways, and a large Depression-era mural of women dancing sits above the stage in the auditorium. While rows of seats remain intact, some tenants also use the space to store their bikes. Brooks appreciates how sunlight pours through the 10-foot-high windows 鈥� 鈥淚’ve been able to basically create a greenhouse in my apartment,鈥� she said. But regulating the temperature is difficult, and she looks forward to HVAC upgrades.
鈥楲egacy residents鈥�
Lakewood Elementary is one of eight sites that the Atlanta Public Schools is now repurposing through an agreement with the Atlanta Urban Development Corp., a nonprofit arm of the city鈥檚 housing authority that renovates historic properties into mixed-income residences. The plan, part of to increase affordable housing, includes giving teachers the first choice of apartments. That was important to Cynthia Briscoe Brown, a former Atlanta Board of Education member whose last vote in December was to .
鈥淪eventy percent of APS employees do not live within the city limits of Atlanta,鈥� she said. 鈥淥ne of the board’s priorities in developing these properties is to make it possible for our employees to not have to drive so far before their work day.鈥�
A lawyer with experience in real estate, she took an interest in the dilapidated properties when she was first elected in 2013. But she also has personal ties to the site where Peeples Street Elementary, one of the eight former schools, once stood. Her father, Woodson Briscoe, attended the school, which sat just down the street from the boarding house, run by an aunt, where the family lived.
鈥淭his was the Depression. They were a young couple with a family, and they couldn’t afford their own house,鈥� she said. Today, as in the neighborhood climb, with some homes priced well over $500,000, families are facing the same problem. 鈥淭he West End is gentrifying to a point where a lot of legacy residents are having trouble staying.鈥�
鈥楢 pall over neighborhoods鈥�
Peeples Street closed in 1982. has been gone for 30 years, torn down after a fire left little worth saving.
But some shuttered schools can sit vacant for decades, attracting crime and casting 鈥渁 pall over neighborhoods,鈥� Alyn Turner, a sociologist with Research for Action, a Philadelphia-based nonprofit, told a group of Atlanta leaders in February.
In a hotel east of downtown, they gathered in a dining room to discuss ways to lessen the negative impacts of the upcoming closures on both students and the neighborhoods where they live.
“People can experience a (school) closure as yet another signal of neighborhood decline.”
Alyn Turner, Research for Action sociologist
Turner cited a showing that between 2005 and 2013, 12 urban districts, including Atlanta, Chicago and Pittsburgh, sold, leased or repurposed 267 school properties, but still had more than 300 on the market.
School closures 鈥渢end to concentrate in communities that have already experienced displacement and disinvestment,鈥� she said. 鈥淧eople can experience a closure as yet another signal of neighborhood decline.鈥�
In Gary, Indiana, a rising number of 911 calls near abandoned schools 鈥� an almost 600% increase between 2022 and 2024. They found fires, hundreds of requests for extra police patrols and 26 reports of 鈥渟hots fired.鈥澛� In 2015, a was found dead in Emerson High School, a Four years later, three teenagers fatally shot a woman and in an emptied-out elementary school.
Like any abandoned building, a boarded-up old school can 鈥減rovide cover鈥� for criminals, according to at Arizona State University. Run-down, vacant structures can even escalate criminal behavior, they write, sending a message that no one owns or cares about the property.
Maintaining former school buildings until they鈥檙e sold or repurposed can make the neighborhood feel safer, Turner told the Atlanta group. But like Briscoe Brown, some participants said they worry about the opposite effect 鈥� gentrification that leaves some lower-income families behind.
鈥淗ow can you help the people who are still there?鈥� asked Femi Johnson, a senior director at Achieve Atlanta, a nonprofit that focuses on college access. 鈥淐an it be a food bank? Can it be a community health center?鈥�
In her hometown of Philadelphia, she saw the former Edward Bok Vocational School, part of a wave of closures in 2013, transformed into an event space with , a destination she felt didn鈥檛 serve the community鈥檚 needs.
Developers are drawn to former schools because of their historic architectural features, like wide hallways and stairwells. The former Monsignor Coyle High School in Taunton, Massachusetts, now , boasts 鈥渟oaring ceilings鈥� and original windows.
Tax credits for historic preservation can offset some of the costs of modernization, but come with restrictions on what developers can change and which 鈥渃haracter-defining features,鈥� like a gymnasium, must go untouched, said Pittsburgh developer Rick Belloli.
In 2022, his company, Q Development, Mt. Alvernia, a former Sisters of St. Francis convent and all-girls school north of Pittsburgh. He described the massive, 333-room main building, the Motherhouse, as 鈥渁 gloriously spectacular historic building鈥� with cast iron stairways and arched ceilings. But he鈥檚 still navigating the approval process, and some developers, he said, avoid former schools because of those hurdles.
鈥楥hoice properties鈥�
Like Coyle and Mt. Alvernia, many of the school-to-apartment conversions are concentrated in the northeast and midwest. Columbus, Ohio, ranked first on of cities with the most school conversion projects.
Next on the list is Cleveland, where the former Martin Luther King Jr. High School, in the predominantly Black , was among those affected by more recent enrollment loss. In 2020, the district , which had dropped to less than 350 students, and a Maryland-based developer for $880,000.
Exploring one of Cleveland鈥檚 abandoned high school鈥檚
Last fall, knowing the building might be demolished, former students gathered to reflect and grab what mementos they could. Some cut strings off the basketball hoops, said Ronald Crosby, who attended in the late 1980s. Others took old library cards and team jerseys.
Ronald鈥檚 sister Johnetta Crosby has fond memories of the school. 鈥淲e had teachers that took their time to make sure you learned,鈥� she said. 鈥淚f you didn’t have anything to wear, they made sure you did. If you couldn’t afford to eat lunch, they fed you anyway.鈥�
D鈥橝ngelo Dixon, who graduated in 2018, felt more conflicted. 鈥淏lack stuff鈥� leaked from the ceiling, he remembered, and academically, he felt behind friends who attended other schools.
鈥淥nce I went to college, I felt like I didn’t know anything,鈥� he said. But he credited the school鈥檚 career-tech program with inspiring him to work in health care. He鈥檚 now a nursing assistant. At the alumni gathering last year, he headed for the art room to grab a ceiling tile he painted with his nickname, Delo 鈥� part of a senior class assignment.
Some alumni hoped the developer, Kareem Abdus-Salaam, would save the building but that鈥檚 not part of his vision for the new residential community, a mix of apartments, townhomes and retail space.
鈥淚 really want to just level the whole site and bring it up, almost like a phoenix rising from the ashes,鈥� he said. He expects to break ground this spring. 鈥淭here are so many abandoned schools in this country that are sitting on choice properties.鈥�
He does, however, intend to make use of the large stones that still border one corner of the property by crushing them into gravel for a quarter-mile walking trail that will wind through the development. Along that pathway, he plans to erect signposts with historical photos of the school so former students 鈥渃an have some feeling of yesteryear.鈥�
In Atlanta, the partnership between the school district and the city gives officials a say in what the developers preserve. They鈥檒l integrate the original Lakewood Elementary building into the overall design.
With a strip of commercial properties on the corner, including a popular restaurant and coffee shop, Hawkins-Wynn, who still lives a few blocks away, hopes the redevelopment will spur even more investment in the neighborhood.
On a recent afternoon, the transition was obvious, but so were the obstacles in its path. As she walked the perimeter of the property, a construction crew put up plywood on a new home across the street. A few lots down, trash and discarded mattresses piled up on the curb.
鈥淭his is why we need redevelopment,鈥� she said, pointing to the debris. 鈥淚t’s still shady around here, but it鈥檚 changing like you won’t believe.鈥�
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