There Goes the Neighborhood – A Visit to Clarendon
PPS closed Clarendon Elementary School in 2006 and the building has sat empty (except for homeless people) since that time. The building is falling apart, covered with graffiti, windows are boarded up, smells like piss and a homeless person is sleeping there.
The property is adjacent to a nice little park with an abandoned playground. Is this what we want for our neighborhoods?
Welcome
Enter with care and love.
If it looks like piss and smells like piss…
Second bathroom.
1 Bedroom.
Who knows what happened here
Working on making a skylight
Watch your head
There’s paint in the dust that runs along the outside wall. Clarendon was built in 1970. Lead paint was banned in 1978. Are children being exposed to lead?
Don’t want to guess what’s smeared on the windows
Where are the children?
The Clarendon building has an interesting history. Like Whitaker Middle School and Marshall High School, Clarendon is one of PPS newest buildings. This is from PPS Historic Building Assessment:
While Clarendon does not meet the 50 year standard for National Register eligibility and is not considered exceptionally significant, the following eligibility determination is provided for future district planning purposes. Given the uniqueness of both the design and planning process used to arrive at the design choice, the Clarendon School is eligible for the National Register of Historic Places under Criteria A and C. As the first Portland school planned in a decentralized and collaborative manner that involved citizens, school administrators, and teachers, Clarendon set an important precedent for community involvement. It is therefore associated with a significant historical pattern or trend in educational facilities planning and policy thus meeting the standard of National Register Criterion A. The building is also eligible under Criterion C, as a unique school building type in the City of Portland. No other hexagonal unit schools were constructed in Portland either before or since the Clarendon building was erected. The building retains much of its historical integrity on the exterior and interior. You can read more about it here.
4 comments
The school district has a responsibility to keep their property up. Of course, they have the responsibility to educate kids who live in poorer neighborhoods too, and they don’t do that either.
Clarendon is down the street from my house. I was not a big fan of this building when it was operational for a number of reasons, but it is now a real blight on the neighborhood. The Neighborhood Association has on numerous occasions pressed PPS for info on their plans to secure this site, but to my knowledge has gotten the usual platitudes in response. Meanwhile, it’s a complete mess and increasingly dangerous. This neighborhood is struggling to maintain itself; PPS is actively undermining it.
I understand the “master plan” to keep buildings available for “swing space” when (more like if) the facilities rebuilding effort gets under way. By my reckoning, in light of economic realities, it’s going to be years before any of that can even be contemplated. So what happens to these buildings in the meantime? If Clarendon is any example, they are going to be allowed to deteriorate and drag down the neighborhood.
Has PPS even considered making these buildings available to communities for some useful purpose? Is there no non-profit that could use the building in the meantime?
They have consistently said NO to groups who have inquired, especially charter school organizations who have already gotten their charters approved.
Yet there are exceptions. SW Charter was denied a lease of Smith School, but Riverdale is being allowed to lease it temporarily while their own elementary is being renovated. Kenton is on a 25-year lease to the De La Salle Catholic HS; they put a lot of money into the renovation of Kenton, so perhaps that is why they got a “yes.” Edwards School was leased to the MESD before it was even officially closed as a PPS elementary school. They moved in less than 6 weeks after school got out that year. Maybe the key is the gentrification level of the surrounding neighborhood?
They will probably fix up Clarendon right after they build the promised middle school on the Whitaker site.
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