Center for Rural Design - University of Minnesota

Community of the City of Morris: Creating a Vision and Reuse Plan for the Elementary School Site

Summary

The Vision for the Elementary School Site project is founded on the principles of community-based planning and design. The University of Minnesota Center for Rural Design (CRD) along with the University of Minnesota-Morris Center for Small Towns (CST) has worked with a broad-based steering committee, consisting of community leaders representing the City of Morris and citizens, to create a community-based design vision and concept plan for potential reuse of the historic 17.7-acre elementary school site in northeastern Morris.

Introduction

In the fall of 2005 a new elementary school facility was opened adjacent to the Morris Area High School bringing to a close the long history of education at the Morris Elementary School complex. Ending the complex’s traditional role as a school has left the community with a large, empty facility on 17.7 acres of land and the challenging task to determine the future of the site. A member of the Morris Planning Commission pointed out succinctly, the Morris Elementary School complex is one of the best and most centrally located parcels available for development in Morris. The school property would be the single largest redevelopment project within the historic portion of the original Morris town site.

In 2004, the University of Minnesota Morris, led by the Center for Small Towns (CST) and in partnership with the City of Morris, initiated a broad reaching project called Adapting to Change: Managing Urbanization in Rural America, funded by a grant from the Community Outreach Partnership Centers program of the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Exploring the possibilities for reuse of the Morris Elementary School complex was designed as a component of the Adapting to Change project.

The Center for Rural Design (CRD) at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, developed a proposal to engage with the citizens of Morris to develop a community-based vision for reuse of the Elementary School complex working within the parameters of the Adapting to Change COPC project, Outreach Activity Twelve. The parameters include: identification of potential reuse scenarios and guiding principles for redevelopment; development of a concept plan to demonstrate the principles; implementation strategies; and a final report. In July, 2005, an updated proposal entitled Community of the City of Morris: Creating a Vision and Reuse Plan for the Elementary School Site was submitted by CRD. This proposal and scope of work defined the nature of the project and forms the basis of this report.

One event of note to this project is a visit to Morris by the Minnesota Design Team (MDT) in October, 2005. The three day visit and charrette by MDT was a component of the COPC grant and served the purpose of broadly identifying the social, cultural, and physical character of the city, defining the opportunities and challenges the city faces, and providing a broad look at ways to address those opportunities and challenges. MDT identified reuse of the elementary school site as one of the most significant opportunities facing the City of Morris. A particularly significant outcome of the MDT visit was the creation of a Citizen Action Team specifically focused on reuse of the site.

CRD Contact: Steve Roos and Tracey Sokolski

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