This week I continue my series where I share ideas and thoughts based on my recent attendance at the APPA National conference in Nashville.  

I’m three posts in and I want to start by saying how great it was to get the APPA national group back together.  We have been attending a number of the regional and state level APPA conferences since they started up again post-COVID.  However, the national, without a traditional trade show was a great experience as a business partner.  I look forward to this becoming an annual event once again.

During several of the presentations, as well as conversations that I had at the conference, and with other universities elsewhere, there is a real reckoning coming for some campuses related to potentially downsizing their portfolio.  It is never an easy decision to reduce your portfolio size.  However, with the demographic projections, the move to hybrid/on-line learning and societies perception of the value of post-secondary education, many schools should legitimately consider downsizing their portfolio in the coming years.

Many K-12 school districts, federal, state and local governments face similar challenges.  It may not even be related to overall portfolio size, it could be not having the right buildings in the right locations due to variable growth within different areas.

Even if you are not looking to shrink your footprint, I am sure that most of you have older buildings that have lots of Deferred Capital Renewal and Maintenance Backlog. They may not meet your functional/program requirements, have lots of grandfathered code and/or accessibility issues.  At some point, no matter how difficult the decision, it will make more sense to get rid of the old and build new.

The biggest challenge with demolishing a building is often the emotional connection that people who have “attended” that building have within your community.  I have been part of many public consultations where people are brought to tears over the possibility of their beloved school building being demolished even though it is old, outdated and would be replaced by a brand new state of the art building.  Logically it makes no sense, but when emotion gets involved, logic tends to take a back seat.

I am going to end this post here and continue next week with some ideas on how you can navigate these difficult decisions with the support of data to help you tell the story of a specific building or group of buildings that you are considering for disposal/demolition.