Former Waverly Middle School eyed for conversion to 37-unit ‘teachers’ village’

The long-vacant Waverly Middle School property will be sold and converted to a “teachers’ village” containing 37 apartments for teachers and para-educators, if city officials approve the transaction.

The Baltimore City Council’s Ways and Means Committee this week approved legislation that would authorize a sale of the property at 707 East 34^th Street. The bill, which is supported by the Waverly Improvement Association, now goes to the full council for consideration.

If City Council approves the project, city officials would have the selected development team sign a land disposition agreement leading to construction.

“It’s a great project,” said City Council member Odette Ramos, who represents Waverly. “We’re very excited about it.”

The three-story school building was constructed in 1959 and has been vacant for more than a decade. It most recently housed the Waverly Middle School and, before that, Venable High School. With its front door boarded up and graffiti on its walls, it is an eyesore compared to the newer Waverly Elementary/Middle School directly across 34^th Street.

Ramos sponsored the sale legislation along with City Council President Nick Mosby, on behalf of the Mayor Scott administration. Ramos said the city’s housing department sought proposals from developers in 2019, received bids from three firms and worked with the community to select one to move forward with the project.

The selected team is headed by Schreiber Brothers Development and Brick by Brick Solutions LLC. It proposed to recycle the 1959 building as 37 one- and two-bedroom apartments housing teachers and para-educators at affordable rates, plus meeting space for the community. A second structure on the east side of the property, a relocatable unit, will be demolished to create green space for the community and parking space for new residents, according to the team’s proposal.

Ramos said the former school will be designed as a ‘zero net building,’ meaning it will produce enough renewable energy to meet its own annual energy consumption requirements. The development team and city housing department representatives are negotiating a sale price, and the transaction would go to the city’s Board of Estimates for approval.

The teachers’ village proposal is the latest example of a trend in which Baltimore officials have shown support for the idea of selling surplus city properties to house people working in certain professions.

In 2019, for example, the Baltimore Development Corporation selected an affiliate of Landmark Partners to convert the former Baltimore International College properties at 17, 19 and 23 South Gay Street and 10 South Frederick Street to Guardian House, a 62-unit apartment development with a fifth of its units reserved at reduced rates for Baltimore City first responders. That project is currently under construction. 

Ramos said the city sought bids to redevelop the Waverly property twice before 2019 but did not get any offers that were acceptable to the community.

One of the other bidders in the latest round of proposals, Ramos said, suggested converting the school to a shared workspace community similar to the ones operated by the We Work organization. The other bidder proposed a new location for the Midtown Academy, a charter school that has been looking for a new home.

“This has been a very long process” for the community, Ramos said at the hearing. “There have been a couple of RFP processes that didn’t work out the way we wanted. Finally, we believe we have the right project.”