Neighbors may get time to buy closed school

Locals who want to keep the vacant Cedarbrook School as a park may soon be granted time to raise money to buy it from the Shoreline School District.

Shoreline School Board members asked district officials to bring a proposal they could vote on at their Nov. 3 meeting.

The proposal, as discussed Oct. 20, would give the Coalition for the Preservation of Cedarbrook until July 1, 2010, to raise money to buy the land, which is on Perkins Way on the Shoreline-Lake Forest Park border. The proposal is also to sell the Aldercrest Annex, a building no longer used at 2545 NE 200th St.

The Coalition for the Preservation of Cedarbrook is a group of neighbors who want to save the school as a park. They estimate it would cost about $5 million to buy it.

Right now, the park-like setting is used for bike riding, playing sports games and picking blackberries. The coalition collected about 200 signatures to keep it a park.

Across Interstate 5, a group of locals is also raising money to develop Sunset Elementary, a closed school, into a park. This past summer, the district formally promised not to sell Sunset and to give locals a chance to raise funds to develop it. The Sunset group was trying to raise about $30,000 to fund a formal process with community members that would result in a plan for a park.

The difference between Sunset and Cedarbrook is that officials want to keep Sunset in case it is needed in the future, said Craig Degginger, school district public information officer. But Cedarbrook, which was closed in 1971, has already been declared surplus.

“Our intention is not to keep that within the district land bank,” he said. “It’s not needed and it’s not anticipated as being needed as a future school site should enrollment turn around some day.”

If the Cedarbrook proposal is approved, and if locals couldn’t raise the money by 2010, the board would have to vote to approve any other sale.

The smaller board room at Shoreline Center was packed Oct. 13 for a public hearing on the proposed sale of Cedarbrook and the Aldercrest Annex. Roughly two dozen people spoke in favor of keeping Cedarbrook as a park, and a few people spoke about Aldercrest Annex.