Construction of the new Marion C. Seltzer Elementary School is back on with revised plans to limit the building’s footprint in Cudell Commons Park and expand the Tamir Rice memorial garden.
Construction crews will start building the new school in 2025, according to a Cleveland Metropolitan School District presentation at a community meeting on Thursday.
Residents concerned about the loss of trees and greenspace led the district to pause the construction project four months ago. It then created a steering committee to advise the project that included neighborhood residents, district parents and city and schools officials. The new plan preserves trees but about 40 will still be cut down.
The district also sought advice from Samaria Rice because the memorial for her son Tamir Rice, who was killed by a Cleveland police officer a decade ago, is located in the park on the same land.
“We know everybody’s not going to be completely satisfied, but this is a long way from where it was at when they were putting that ugly building down along the park and they were tearing down all those trees,” said Hiawatha Powell, a representative of the Tamir Rice Foundation who sat on the steering committee. “This is about coming together, and I think that’s what we did on this project.”
New Marion C. Seltzer on the same site as current school
CMSD originally planned to build the new Marion C. Seltzer school on park land adjacent to the current school, allowing students to stay in the old building during construction. Now, the district will move Marion C. Seltzer’s students to the H. Barbara Booker building, about 1.5 miles away, from fall 2025 through spring 2027. That allows construction crews to first demolish the old building and build the new one on the same site, according to Jeff Henderson, the project’s architect.
The demolition and construction should take about two years, meaning the new Marion C. Seltzer could be ready by the 2027-2028 school year, Henderson said. CMSD’s presentation did not mention an estimated cost for the project.
UPDATE: CMSD estimates the project will cost about $33 million. According to a March 2024 report, the district’s original plan for the new school would have cost roughly $23 million.
As part of the plan, the city will plant trees and extend about 40 feet of green space around the Tamir Rice memorial garden by shifting a parking lot, according to Jim McKnight, a landscape architect with the city. The city will also replace the old basketball courts with new ones moved to the western side of the park’s baseball diamond.
“We want to create a pretty significant vegetative, planted, landscaped garden buffer around the memorial,” McKnight said. “We’re really creating a calmer, quieter place of respect for the memorial.”
One parent ‘grateful’ Cudell park soccer field will stay open
The revised construction plan will keep the school at three floors to shrink its footprint in the park. CMSD originally envisioned a two-story building stretched across the northwest corner of the park. That would have cut into a multipurpose field used by both Marion C. Seltzer students and children who play sports at the Cudell Recreation Center in the park.
Candice Mann, a parent of three children who attended Marion C. Seltzer, was happy to see the play field preserved in the new plan. She was on the steering committee advising the project.
“I have kids that are involved with all the sports in the rec center, and it is a big thing for the neighborhood kids to be able to have access to that soccer field where it’s at,” Mann said. “I’m grateful that they’re keeping that.”
Mann said she also pushed for entrance ramps and an elevator in the new building to make it more accessible. Plans for the new building will add features to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act.
“There’s been several moms and grandparents that have sat outside waiting for their kids in the rain,” she said. “They’ve never been up to their children’s classrooms even, and that’s really sad.”
Why did CMSD form the steering committee?
In 2023, a group of residents pushed back on CMSD’s first construction plan, and said they didn’t get a chance to weigh in on the new school’s design. They also wanted to protect mature trees in the park and ensure that it remained open for neighborhood use.
Forming a group called Friends of Cudell Commons Park, they filed a lawsuit against the district in September 2023 seeking to stop the new school’s construction. A judge denied their request in March, clearing the way for construction to begin. CMSD still paused the project in May to seek more community input.
The district formed the steering committee, which has met to brainstorm the new construction plan three times since July. CMSD said it will host more community meetings in the coming months to keep residents in the loop on the project. The next meeting, which isn’t scheduled yet, will give residents an opportunity to weigh in on how the new building will look.
