Although people have suggested the old K-Mart building as a possible location for a new school, Austin Public School officials aren’t sold on the idea.

While district officials have put together plans that would use K-Mart, they say there are several drawbacks to converting a former department store into an intermediate school, chief among them the recent negotiations between K-Mart representatives and school administrators.

K-Mart representatives are willing to sub-lease the property to the district, but officials say such an agreement is a large risk for the board to take.

“If we’re not able to purchase it, I don’t think leasing the site is going to make a lot of financial sense,” said Mark Stotts, the district’s finance and operations director.

The old K-Mart property is owned by DCA Minn LLC, out of Kansas City, Mo. The site is currently under lease to K-Mart through 2016. While researching possible sites, district officials proposed buying out the lease and purchasing the property from DCA Minn. A broker for the owners told Stotts that DCA Minn would sell the property to the district at a much higher price than what district officials are willing to pay. K-Mart representatives brought their own possible solution to the table by offering to sublease the property to the district. They were supposed to give district officials a cost estimate last week, but hadn’t as of Friday morning. Still, school officials say a subleasing agreement wouldn’t benefit the district financially, even if they were able to maintain the lease for decades. If K-Mart’s representatives built in extra costs for profit, it may be cheaper for the district to build a school from scratch.

“I just don’t see how it’s going to cost less than us purchasing that piece of property,” Stotts said.

In addition, the building would have to be retrofitted, which means converting wide open spaces into classrooms and bringing spaces like bathrooms and kitchens up to code, possibly even scrapping the existing ones.

“We’d basically be starting (over),” said Stotts.

Paul Armon, of Armon Architecture in Rochester, has converted buildings into schools before. The architect converted an old church building into the Rochester Math and Science Academy and is currently converting an old industrial building into the new Rochester STEM Academy, which will open this September. While both schools are charter schools with student populations considerably smaller than what a proposed 5-6 building would house, Armon says retrofitting buildings cuts a lot of costs in running utilities such as water and waste lines, making retrofits a cheaper option at times. Although Amron hasn’t seen the K-Mart site, he said new buildings generally cost more than retrofitting.

“Building new is going to be more expensive, especially when you’re dealing with land that doesn’t have utilities,” he said.

The K-Mart site doesn’t have enough space for the district’s needs, either. The old K-Mart building is about 80,000 square feet and a new 5-6 school would need about 110,000 square feet to accommodate the 750-800 projected students. An expansion would be needed on the property.

Retrofitting the building comes with its own costs, as well. There has to be the proper amount of bathrooms and at least some of them have to be handicap and special needs accessible. The old K-Mart’s kitchen, contrary to popular opinion, is nowhere near up to code with cafeteria standards. The new kitchen would need stainless steel equipment and proper local health code requirements as well. The large interior would have to be cordoned off into classrooms, each with their own HVAC requirements. The building would have to have more entrances and exits and make sure there’s enough parking spaces. In other words, everything would have to be upgraded.

“You’re basically buying four walls,” Stotts has said publicly on several occasions.

Yet Amron points out that the existing utilties would be a boon to district officials’ needs.

“What you can do is if you strategically locate the existing spaces to the waste lines and water lines in the building, then you can tap into them and you’re not doing as much work,” Amron said.

Though district officials and ATS & R architects have mapped out what a prospective school would look like on the K-Mart property and K-Mart representatives haven’t given a cost estimate for leasing the property, Stotts believes the costs associated with long-term leasing and bringing the building up to code wouldn’t be cost-effective.

“Just thinking through it, I don’t believe it can be cheaper than if we went out and found a piece of property to purchase,” Stotts said. “I don’t see how it could be.”