The city of Cortland and the Cortland Enlarged City School District agreed Tuesday to a two-year lease of the former Parker Elementary School in Cortland to house students as the school district undertakes a $6.5 million renovation of Barry Primary School.
The school district approved the measure at a special meeting; the city council followed suit about the same time.
“The school district has voted yes on their end,” Mayor Scott Steve said. “We’re really excited about it.”
The city’s vote was 7-0, with Alderperson Mary Clare Pennello (D-3rd Ward) absent.
The district will pay $90,000 a year for the facility. Steve has estimated that maintaining the unused building costs the city about $100,000. And the agreement saves the district the cost of renting portable classrooms during the renovation project.
The renovation will mean the temporary relocation of up to 140 students who normally attend school at Barry Primary, beginning in the fall of the 2025-26 school year. Work at Barry would remodel approximately 10 classrooms, add washrooms and move the library to make room to add a sensory room.
The school district closed the school in 2018 as it consolidated to three elementary schools from five. The city bought the building in 2021 for a token amount with plans to lease it to a number of agencies as a child-care facility, but the deal fell through when costs to renovate the facility were greater than expected — $5.6 million rather than $2 million.
And it was that cost that brought a question from Mike Dexter of Cortland: “The city never should have voted to buy that piece of property,” he said, and he’s glad to see it used as a school again, if even for just a little while. “But who’s going to be paying for the repairs? One of the reasons they (the school district) got out of the building was the cost of repairs.”
However, reopening the building as a school won’t require the same work as using it as a child-care facility, said Alderperson Troy Beckwith (D-7th Ward). It won’t need individual exits from each classroom, a new sprinkler system or an elevator.
“If you’ve got a day-care, you need a lot more investment,” Beckwith said.
And the city has a private $100,000 donation to help with some of that, Steve said, although he did not provide details Tuesday night.
The city tried to sell the building in 2023 to Ithaca Neighborhood Housing Services to be redeveloped to create low-income housing, but that deal collapsed under the weight of neighbors’ opposition and a compromise that would have reduced the amount of space the new owner could use for housing.
