Inside the red brick building that was once Larimer School in Pittsburgh’s Larimer neighborhood, there are no longer kids or classes. What were once classrooms are now 35 apartments, for people with a range of incomes.
But the 1896 building, with its high ceilings, terrazzo floors, and wide hallways, still has a school “feel” as you walk by it or inside its corridors.
“Reminds me of old days,” joked JW Kim, director of planning and development for the Housing Authority of the City of Pittsburgh (HACP), as he walked through the halls on a recent morning.
Closed in 1980, the old building sat vacant and abandoned for many years before being reborn as housing as part of a massive, multi-million dollar redevelopment effort in Larimer and East Liberty. Community members pushed to make sure the long-empty school was included as part of the redevelopment. The building reopened in 2022.
More than a dozen former Pittsburgh Public Schools like Larimer School are now apartment buildings, both affordable and market-rate, according to a WESA analysis of previously-closed Pittsburgh schools. More than 850 new apartments have been created through these conversions, which span the city.
With the district currently weighing another round of school closures — including recommendations to permanently close 10 buildings after the 2025-26 school year — the fate of Pittsburgh’s schools is top of mind for many residents, and some community members are calling on the district to breathe new life into its buildings in this way.
Housing can be a natural second life for a closed school, according to experts, though such conversions can be costly and sometimes challenging, particularly if the school was closed for a long period of time and not well-maintained.
Older schools are typically robustly built structures, with existing stairwells and wide hallways, as well as classrooms that can often be the perfect size for a one or two-bedroom apartment, said Rob Sleighter, principal owner of Uniontown-based Sleighter Design, an engineering, architecture, and surveying firm. His firm is the lead design firm working to convert the former St. Coleman’s School in Turtle Creek into apartments for the Allegheny County Housing Authority.
“They're well built,” Sleighter said. “So you don't have to necessarily worry about the structural aspects.”
That’s not to say such conversions are without difficulties, he said, as changing the use of a building can be expensive.
“When you change the use of a building, you're going to redo all the electrical, you're going to redo the plumbing, and you're going to redo the heating and air conditioning,” he said.
Any conversion to housing will also be harder if the buildings are not well-maintained once they are shuttered, other experts said, and the district should make sure roofs aren’t leaking and heating systems are still functioning.
“The main thing is really early planning, pre-planning, thoughtful planning, how to preserve this building for future use,” said HACP’s Kim, who managed the Larimer project.
Conversations between community groups, affordable housing advocates and the school district regarding the next round of closures haven’t happened yet, said Rick Swartz, executive director of the Bloomfield-Garfield Corporation.
“I would say that given the stress that [the school board is] under currently with getting a balanced budget put together, I can understand why they would put off this conversation for a short period of time,” Swartz said. “But I think by the early part of next year, they need to start thinking seriously about: what is our strategy when it comes to either disposing of these buildings or perhaps collaborating with community organizations on their repurposing.”
Because affordable housing is difficult to build due to funding challenges, school district officials should also consider selling the buildings at a low price, said Tamara Dudukovich, manager of special real estate projects for the Allegheny County Housing Authority.
“If PPS wants to be a good partner and support conversion of schools into affordable housing, they should be open to accepting less of a return than they might otherwise want,” she said.
“It's very challenging for affordable housing developers to pay substantial acquisition costs as most funding sources they tap into are targeted or limited to renovation and construction,” Dudukovich continued. “Contributing property or selling below appraised value are ways PPS could advance residential conversions that serve lower-income households.”
Swartz, of the Bloomfield-Garfield Corporation, agreed. If the district’s priority is to “capitalize on the sale of these assets to the greatest extent possible, then there's no point in even starting a conversation about affordable housing,” he said.
When the district sells closed buildings, it must get three commercial appraisals for each property and can’t sell it for less than the highest of the appraisals, according to Pat Morosetti with Fourth River Development. The brokerage firm has helped the district market and sell 18 of its former schools and land sites to date.
Fourth River gathers information on all interested buyers and community feedback for the district. Morosetti said sales must also cover any existing debt on the building, which could limit the number of interested buyers.
“We’ve been successful in selling all of these, so at the end of the day it worked out,” he said. “But if you did have really high debt on a property and the value is much lower, that could be a challenge.”
Sales are then brought to the school board for a vote.
“Obviously we're very, very concerned and conscious about needing to have a plan for buildings if and when they close,” Board President Gene Walker told WESA, though he said it was too early for most discussions. The board has yet to vote on which buildings will ultimately close.
One longtime board member said the board always hopes the buildings will have community-focused uses, but can’t control that after a sale.
“We have no control over what happens to buildings once they are sold,” said board member Sylvia Wilson. She declined to discuss specifics, but said the district has been burned before when a promised use for a building has changed after a sale.
In 2014, the school board sold the former Rogers School in Garfield to a developer who planned to convert the building into market-rate apartments. Five years later, however, the school reopened as part of the Environmental Charter School.
Several other closed PPS buildings have also become charter schools — an outcome Walker said the district doesn’t want to occur upon this next round of school closures.
“We're obviously not interested in additional charter schools coming in and taking up space. And so we have to be kind of mindful about how we go through that process,” Walker said.
PPS is currently holding on to four previously closed buildings: Fort Pitt Elementary in Garfield, Northview PreK-8 in Northview Heights, Bon Air Elementary and Knoxville Middle School.
PPS administrators referred all questions about the potential next uses of these buildings, as well as any steps toward planning for future closures, to Morosetti and Fourth River. He said his firm previously marketed Fort Pitt, which closed in 2012, though the district has since pulled it out of that process.
Neighborhood groups want to see Fort Pitt re-used as a center for offices, shared space and affordable housing, Swartz said, but those efforts haven’t come to fruition.
“The school district has not been collaborative with us in finding a new use for this building,” he said.
Beyond the dollars and cents, many neighborhood residents — who generally aren’t happy about school closures — do often see the benefit of re-using the space as housing.
“Any time you go to a ribbon cutting or the groundbreaking, there is someone in the neighborhood who comes forward and they went to school there or their children went to school there and they think it's really cool that they get to live there now,” Dudukovich said.
Donna Jackson, who heads the Larimer Consensus Group, a neighborhood organization involved in getting the school turned into apartments, often hears from former students.
“People come up to me and tell me, ‘I went to that school at such-and-such a time,’” she said.
She’s proud the building was able to finally have a second life as housing.
“I think it's a great asset to the community,” she said, speaking nearby in the offices of the Larimer Consensus Group.
And the work to re-use a portion of the building is still ongoing — there are plans to turn the school's former gym and auditorium into a community kitchen and event space. Jackson said she is hopeful that aspect will be completed by 2025; Pittsburgh’s Urban Redevelopment Authority voted to approve funds for the project at its September meeting.
What would she tell residents of other neighborhoods who might soon have an empty school building nearby?
“I would say take time, sit down at the table,” Jackson said. “It may not happen overnight, but sit down and conversate to where you can get a win-win … and find the financing to be able to do it.”
While no closures will occur during the 2025-2026 school year, district leaders are drafting a feasibility study and proposed timeline for the next round of potential school mergers. Both will be presented to school board members early next year before any changes go to a vote.
