The Sedona-Oak Creek School District is doing its part to alleviate the Verde Valley’s housing shortage with a new plan to provide affordable rentals for teachers and local government employees.

In May 2018, the district voted to close Big Park Community School in the Village of Oak Creek due to declining enrollment and consolidated its students at West Sedona School and Sedona Red Rock High School. The district has since rented portions of the Big Park school property to various organizations, including Journey Church, Project Fill the Need and the Sedona Public Library, which operates its VOC branch library out of the old school library.

Past tenants have also included the Sedona Village Learning Center, Red Mountain Music Academy and the Arizona State School for the Deaf and Blind. As ASDB is currently leaving at the end of its three-year lease, its departure makes this “a perfect time for a holistic plan,” in the words of District Director of Operations Jennifer Chilton.

A major portion of that plan involves converting the school’s Building C, built in 1990 as classroom space, into affordable housing for teachers. The building contains 11,216 square feet of space, which the district estimates could be converted into between eight and 11 condo units of 1,000 square feet each, including studio and one- and two-bedroom apartments.

“It’s easy to recruit teachers to Sedona,” Superintendent Dennis Dearden said, but he noted that getting those teachers here often presents a problem due to the lack of housing. “A lot of the time they’ll sign contracts but have to back out in May or June … We’ve got teachers staying in other teachers’ homes. We had a teacher just a couple weeks ago that would potentially have had to leave the district” because his home was being turned into a short-term rental.

“I was in this very same situation myself when I moved here,” Dearden said. “I didn’t have a place to live. I lived in a motel in Cottonwood. There were times when I thought, ‘Is this worth it?’”

“Last year we actually had teachers who had to leave mid-year because their living situation was pulled out from under them,” said Heather Herman, a former school board member.

According to Herman, the idea of converting Building C into housing was first discussed in 2019. It was not until the summer of 2021, however, “that we really got serious about it,” Herman said. “Myself and Denny were the first ones who really sat down, came up with a plan and took action.”

She recalled taking the “giant rolls of blueprints” for the building and having them converted to digital files, since it was constructed so long ago that the architects no longer have digital copies of the plans. In April, she broached the proposal to Tim Carter, Yavapai County superintendent of schools, who was supportive of the idea.

“Our district could be a model for how this could work,” Carter said.

Herman and Dearden then mentioned the concept to Basil and Mimi Maher, Village of Oak Creek residents, and president and vice president, respectively, of the West Sedona School Parent-Teacher Association. Three of their children attend school in the district.

The Mahers are heavily involved in educational philanthropy. In addition to supporting the West Sedona STEM program, they donated $104,000 to the district to help establish the Wildcat Kid’s Club afterschool program. They also donated a six-figure sum to the Montclair Kimberley Academy in New Jersey and helped endow the Michael E. Maher Learning Center in memory of Basil Maher’s father at the Dr. Lena Edwards Charter School in Jersey City, NJ.

In July 2007, Maher and his siblings sold their father’s stevedoring business, Maher Terminals, to Deutsche Bank for more than $1 billion.

Under the terms of the letter of intent, which was approved by the district’s governing board on Nov. 1, the Mahers will lease Building C from the district at a nominal figure. They will redevelop the building into residential units at their own cost and will be responsible for obtaining all approvals and building permits. Once the conversion is complete, the Mahers will manage and maintain the building and will receive all rents paid by the tenants. When they have recovered their renovation costs, without interest — or at an earlier date if they so decide — the lease will terminate and the improved property will revert to the school district.

The Mahers aim to finalize a lease with the district by December and have the conversion of Building C to housing units completed by Aug. 1, 2023, in time for the start of the new school year.

“I’m the one who said I wanted to get it done by Aug. 1,” Maher remarked. “They didn’t believe me.” He pointed out that he and his wife currently have resources lined up for another project that will enable them to finish the reconstruction more quickly than would otherwise be possible.

“Lots of school districts with vacant buildings are trying to do the same thing, but they run up against the cost factor,” Dearden said. “[The Mahers] stepped up and said, ‘we will rent this building from you and take care of all of the construction.’”

No formal estimate of the renovation costs has been made yet. Dearden stated that an architectural firm had quoted the district $85,000 just for a redesign of the building. He suggested that the conversion costs might come to around $3 million.

Rental rates for the teachers who will be occupying the building will be set once the conversion is complete. “We’ll poll the teachers and see what is a fair market price for them,” Dearden said.

While teachers will be given priority for the condos, any units not being occupied by educators will be offered to local government employees, including those who work for the police or fire departments.

Developing affordable housing on the school grounds is just one of the district’s ambitions for the property. In partnership with Yavapai County, they are actively seeking to attract additional community services to the site. The Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office will open a substation in the former administration building in the near future. The Yavapai County Library has also expressed interest, as has Verde Valley Search & Rescue. “So many of their rescues originate in this area, around Bell Rock,” Chilton observed with a chuckle.

“For five years that C building has just sat,” Dearden said. “I think this is a great use of the property and we can bring services that will benefit the Village of Oak Creek.”

“We have an angel looking over us, and we have the money up front to start immediately,” said Randy Hawley, president of the school board. “Cottonwood’s trying to do it. They don’t have the money … Teachers and employees don’t want to live somewhere else and work here.”

“As a parent, I can’t tell you how important it is to have teachers who are here, who have housing, and who can stay,” Herman said to the board at the Nov. 1 meeting. “I believe if we had housing opportunities on campus at Big Park, we would have more teachers.”

“The great teacher in the classroom is the key to success,” Dearden said. And now, “we’re going to own our own set of condos so we can recruit the very best teachers.”