Browne Beauty Bond Measure Would Fund Replacement Of Vintage School Building

Postman Moe Chaffin puffed on a cigarette while taking a break along his North Driscoll route and wondered.

Chaffin has spent the last year driving past Browne Elementary School, one of the most beautiful school buildings in Spokane.

He just can’t figure out why anybody would even think about tearing down Browne.

“It’s a beautiful building. I hate to see it go down,” Chaffin said. “I don’t like to see anything torn down as long as it’s useful.”

But school officials say the building has outlived its usefulness. And if voters approve a Feb. 3 bond measure for Spokane schools, Browne would be replaced by a new building at the current site.

The new school would cost $7 million.

District planning director Ned Hammond said the current Browne “is worn out.” The school was built in 1914.

“It’s not solid structurally,” Hammond said. “The consensus was that it needed to be replaced.”

It may be the consensus of district officials, but it’s not one shared by some in the Browne community.

“I hate to see the old building go,” said Brad Sorenson, who lives across the street and whose daughter attends the school.

“They say they want the replacement to look like the current one, but there’s a part of me that has a feeling it will just look like one of those ugly concrete schools you see in other neighborhoods,” Sorenson said.

District officials have abandoned their 1970s prototype school that has been the blue print for the last 19 elementary schools built. They hope to reflect some of the character of Browne in the new building, which is expected to be a two-story brick building.

The new Browne would be built on the playfield in front of the current school. Students would move into the new school at its completion and then the old one would be demolished.

Browne looks fine from the outside but, inside, school principal Rodger Lake said that isn’t the case. The school has had more facelifts than Michael Jackson.

The building had additions built in the late 1940s, early ‘50s, during the ‘70s and once this decade. Nine out of 29 classrooms are held in portable trailers.

“It’s really chopped up,” Lake said.

Browne, with 480 students, has been growing by 10 students a year in the last five years, Lake said. He said the school can be uncomfortably crowded.

Keeping the temperature steady in the winter months is a challenge. The heat has to be turned up in order to get enough warmth to upstairs classrooms, causing the downstairs rooms to smolder.

The roof of the main building and all its portables are flat, so water filters its way through many parts of the ceiling.

The upper playfield behind the building drains poorly and floods the field regularly.

In addition, Hammond said underground water has caused the floor to heave in certain bathrooms and classrooms.

Near the main entrance, a long, slanted ramp connecting the main building to a 1948 portable is a safety hazard for students, Lake said. The school is not handicap accessible.

The fire alarm often goes out and students eat breakfast and lunch in the gym because the school has no cafeteria.

Hammond said the district would save itself $1 million by erecting a new building instead of trying to restore the current one.

“The foundation is in very poor condition,” Hammond said. “We would have to dig down and re-route the underground water and replace the (building’s) footings.”

He said a new site would make it easier to install trench drains and compact the soil for a better foundation.

Dana Myers, chairperson of the Browne Elementary site council, said parents on the council wanted to save the building. But after touring the school, they realized it would cost too much to modernize it.

“The original section of the building we wanted to save because of the architecture, but there really was no way to save that piece,” Myers said.

“We weren’t interested in looking like the other schools, but with the building being on a hillside, the floor plans for some of the district’s other buildings won’t work on that site. Because of that the school will be a brand-new design.”

Hammond and Lake said if the bond passes, input from the community will be sought regarding the design of the new Browne.

“The Browne community is a good, solid community as far as elementary school enrollment,” Hammond said. “We don’t want that to change.”

Said Lake: “There’s a lot of love and respect that people have for this school. Before Indian Trail, Woodridge… this was the school that northwest residents of Spokane attended.”

Browne alumnus Mike Unger shares that love and respect. But that’s why he thinks the current Browne should be put on Spokane’s historical register and refurbished.

“They’ve torn down a lot of buildings in this town and called it progress,” said Unger, who graduated from the school in 1958.

“Too me, J.J. Browne has style. Now they’re talking like they’ve built the place on sand,” Unger said. “Heck, shore it up, it’s a beautiful old building.”

Myers said parents felt strongly about their school, but many understood the need for a new building.

“The is school is a strong part of the neighborhood,” she said, “and those considerations by the district weren’t taken lightly.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 3 Photos (1 color)

MEMO: This story also ran in the South Side Voice on January 29, 1998, page S10, in the column Cross-Town Neighbors: News from the North Side.