The Barton Academy Foundation announced this week it has reached its $14 million fundraising goal to renovate the interior of the historic Barton Academy building in downtown Mobile, clearing the way for it to reopen as a modern public middle school.
“This has been a long road, and we couldn’t be happier to reach this milestone,” said Elizabeth Stevens, president of the foundation, a nonprofit that has worked alongside Mobile County Public Schools since 2012 to fund the renovation. “For 10 years the BAF board, our donors and Mobile County Public Schools focused on the end goal of returning students to Barton Academy for the first time in more than 50 years. That will soon be a reality.”
Construction on the 184-year-old building, located in Mobile’s Central Business District, is set to begin in June. The Board of School Commissioners for Mobile County Public Schools previously completed a $4.2 million exterior renovation of the Barton Academy and adjoining Yerby buildings in 2015, but the interior, most recently used as MCPSS administrative office space, required a far larger investment to convert into a modern academic facility.
The campaign’s largest single gift, $1.27 million, came from the Ben May Charitable Trust. The J.L. Bedsole Foundation and the Hearin-Chandler Foundation each contributed $500,000, and additional gifts of $200,000 or more came from the Crampton Trust, the Daniel Foundation of Alabama, the Mobile City Council, the Mobile County Commission, the Dr. Monte L. Moorer Foundation and the Wayne D. McRae Fund of the Community Foundation of South Alabama. In total, nearly 450 foundations, businesses and individuals contributed to the effort, which had raised about $5.2 million in cash and pledges before the foundation turned to a more complex financing structure to close the remaining gap.
The foundation reached its goal with help from AMCREF Community Capital, which served as tax credit advisor, and $8 million in combined equity from the federal New Markets Tax Credit program, Federal Historic Tax Credits and State Historic Tax Credits. AMCREF brought in United Bank, U.S. Bank and Brownfield Revitalization as tax credit funders, with United Bank providing bridge funding that allowed the foundation to leverage the historic tax credit equity and multi-year pledges and begin construction on schedule.
A separate $2 million came through the AlabamaSAVES Program, run by the Alabama Department of Economic and Community Affairs’ Energy Division, to cover energy conservation upgrades including LED lighting, energy-efficient HVAC systems and energy-efficient water heaters for the school’s cafeteria.
“Financing this historic effort was clearly one of Mobile’s most complicated preservation and education projects ever,” Stevens said. “As with some other important development projects boosting downtown’s economy, we turned to state and federal tax credits to make Barton’s comeback possible.”
School commissioners recently approved a construction bid with Ben M. Radcliff Contractor Inc., and Barton Academy for Advanced World Studies is slated to open in August 2021. The school is expected to enroll roughly 300 students in grades six through nine, with a curriculum built around real-world problem solving, multiple foreign languages, advanced fine arts, entrepreneurial learning and dedicated collaboration and STEM labs. Admission will work similarly to a magnet school application process, with academic criteria and application details expected to be announced in fall or winter 2020.
Barton Academy has sat largely vacant since MCPSS moved its administrative offices to west Mobile in 2007, and the building landed on Alabama’s most endangered historic properties list twice during that time. Stevens said reopening it as a school is expected to spur redevelopment in the surrounding area of downtown Mobile, which has been largely bypassed by revitalization transforming other parts of the city center.
“A new school at Barton will spark redevelopment in the area immediately surrounding it, largely bypassed by the revitalization transforming other downtown areas,” Stevens said.