With land prices skyrocketing, the Lee County School Board decided to take a "commercial" approach to fulfill some of its need for new schools and offices by investing in two vacant Kmart stores and a mall.
Buying and converting existing space has proved cheaper and quicker to accomplish, the board said.
East Lee County High opened on Aug. 8 in a former 84,704-square-foot Kmart. Buying the land and converting the store into classrooms cost the district about $12.5 million. Rayma C. Page Elementary also opened this fall, with 128,000 square feet of space in a former Kmart store at a cost of $16.5 million.
A 330,000-square-foot mall currently is being converted to house the district's administration facilities and classrooms at a cost of $25.3 million. It is expected to open in the fall of 2006.
Facilities with commercial origins were converted to eight new schools and new offices that the school district financed through the issuance of $315.8 million of certificates of participation in 2004 and this year.
The district's COPs are rated A-plus by Fitch Ratings and Standard & Poor's, and A1 by Moody's Investors Service.
Lee County, on southwest Florida's coast, has experienced population growth of 32% over the last decade. The school district, which is coterminous with the county, had 65,650 students enrolled last year. Enrollment is projected to be 75,160 in the current school year.
