By Adam Pagnucco.
In his capital budget briefing of the school board on Tuesday, Superintendent Thomas Taylor revealed that he wants to see a public-private partnership (P3) redevelop MCPS’s headquarters site at the Carver Educational Services Center in Rockville. If the board agrees with him, that could open the door to alternate uses at the site and potentially generate significant benefits for MCPS and the county as a whole.
First, a recap. Taylor is a bold fellow. After proposing a huge operating budget last year (and getting almost all of it), he returned to propose a huge capital budget this year. One component of the latter budget was a $400+ million line item for a new MCPS headquarters. I wrote that the school district should pursue a redeveloped site including a new headquarters, housing and other uses, which could conceivably fit on the 31-acre parcel.
It turns out that Taylor was thinking the same thing.
There is widespread acknowledgement that the Carver building is obsolete and a problematic workplace for employees. Back in November, the president of the school administrators union testified that the building had “Mold that impacts the air they breathe, bugs that bite and leave bumps and rashes, inadequate ventilation, and concerns about air quality. These are not conditions that support wellness. The stories are alarming… There are rooms where some employees refuse to work because colleagues have become seriously ill with upper respiratory and autoimmune issues while working there.” Last year, many but not all of the building’s employees moved to leased space elsewhere in Rockville.
In his slide presentation to the school board on Tuesday, Taylor started by laying out the issues with the current building. He then pivoted to discussion of a P3 to redevelop the site.
Here’s how it would work. MCPS would hire an advisor to help it identify opportunities for a P3 model. Those opportunities would not be limited to Carver as the advisor would evaluate MCPS’s entire real estate portfolio. Eventually, MCPS would select one or more private partners to design, build, finance and possibly maintain covered facilities and would pay them based on performance standards. Taylor cited Prince George’s County Public Schools as using this model for some of their properties.
For the specific Carver property, Taylor discussed its “potential for retail, restaurants, housing, private office space, transportation, community services and more” along with its proximity to two Metro stations, Montgomery College, Rockville Town Center, commercial businesses and I-270. Those characteristics could be seen favorably by the private sector. Taylor called potential redevelopment of the site “a win-win, not just for Montgomery County Public Schools, but also for our community.”
The slides below lay out Taylor’s concepts for the headquarters and a P3 model generally.
This is not a slam-dunk. The site is covered by historic preservation requirements. Some have raised the prospect of locating a fire station there in the past. The site needs new zoning for redevelopment since it is zoned for single family housing right now. There are significant coordination challenges between MCPS, the City of Rockville, private partners and perhaps other governmental entities as well. And when P3s go wrong, they go REALLY wrong. Just look at the Purple Line.
That said, the easy ways out are unappealing. MCPS could conceivably continue its current practice of spreading out its central office staff among several facilities, some of which are leased, but that would create costs and inefficiency. It could seek to buy a large office building but the cost of such a purchase would fall on taxpayers. It could try to renovate Carver, but the building is likely too small to house all of MCPS’s central operations and the cost of doing so would be significant given the building’s decrepit condition.
Taylor is right: the potential for the Carver site is vast as a redeveloped property. To the extent that it could incorporate private sector uses, it could be a tax revenue generator for the county and city rather than a siphon. And let’s say it all together: WE NEED MORE HOUSING.
The superintendent deserves enormous credit for making this proposal. Let’s see where it leads.