The Sedona-Oak Creek School District Governing Board announced during its May 13 meeting that the shuttered Big Park Community School in the Village of Oak Creek had been appraised at a reconciled “as is” market value of $9.5 million, as of April 3, which takes into account $300,000 in deferred roof maintenance.

The appraisal represents a milestone in SOCSD’s effort to potentially divest itself of the property, which the district no longer wishes to manage or invest in since it ceased serving students after the board closed the campus in May 2018 due to declining enrollment.

The school board unanimously approved issuing a requests for proposal for an appraisal of the property on Dec. 3 and issued the RFP on Feb. 11. Tempe-based Appraisal Technology LLC appraised the property at a cost of $5,000.

District voters approved a future sale of the property, which consists of 20.8 acres zoned R1L-18 — Residential and 69,712 square feet of buildings, in the Nov. 5 election by 7,802 votes to 2,528 after the Yavapai County Board of Supervisors expressed no interest in a proposal by former Yavapai County Supervisor Donna Michaels [D-District 3] for the county to purchase the property.

Superintendent Tom Swaninger, Ph.D., said that the supervisor’s lack of interest to discuss Michaels’ proposal is why SOCSD did not have an appraisal completed until recently. “I think the case has proven out to be that the support was never really there [from the county] and we made the right decision in waiting [to have an appraisal],” Swaninger said.

Swaninger and Governing Board President Randy Hawley subsequently confirmed that the district intends to list the property for sale. “It’s a financial drain on the district, not in the shape where we can really rent it out because it needs some repairs,” Hawley subsequently said. “I don’t think we’re ever going to need it again. So I think the right thing to do is to look for a buyer.”

The appraiser’s report estimated that the cost to repair approximately 34,000 square feet of roof leaks and ceiling damage throughout the campus would be around $300,000.

Part of the property is currently rented to the Community Library Sedona for its VOC branch and to Christian Faith Fellowship as a satellite campus for Sunday services.

Swaninger said that the district will hold another public meeting at the Big Park campus “for community members to ask questions and offer feedback” but that no date has been set.

“The next step would be the board would then decide if they wanted to list the property,” Swaninger said to the nonprofit Big Park Regional Coordinating Council during the group’s meeting on May 8. “If we want to list the property, then we would essentially go through the same steps that we did for the appraisal for a broker service.”

The next SOCSD school board meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, June 3, at 4 p.m. at the Sedona Performing Arts Center. Hawley said that the board would discuss the Big Park property at that time and that there was “a good possibility” the board will vote on seeking a broker for the property.