The city council passed two bills this afternoon that will preserve the 107-year-old University Heights building as a community center. The Seattle School District, which closed the elementary school in 1989, still owns the one-block property at NE 50th Street and University Way NE. But the district has been closing schools and selling properties for years, such as Queen Anne High School which was converted into apartments and later into condominiums. “They could have sold it for condos or something else,” says City Council Member Jean Godden, sponsor of the bills passed today.

Godden explains that the first bill releases $2.5 million dollars, approved in 2008, “when we were pretty fat,” to help the University Heights Center for the Community Association purchase the building from the school district. The group must continue to use the building as a community center—such as renting the space for child care, district Democrat meetings, and arts education—for the next 15 years. The second bill designates one-third of an acre of the parking lot on the south side of the building, the location of the University District Farmers Market, for use as a new park. “This ensures that you will continue to have the farmers market there because the city owns it,” she says.

Photo via Seattle Schools (.pdf)