Vacant office parks repurposed as school, college buildings

FAIRFIELD, Conn. (AP) — Across the U.S., office parks that have lost their luster with employers are being repurposed as school buildings.

Colleges and school districts willing to think beyond traditional school settings are retrofitting office space to help them deal with growing enrollments and a scarcity of available land in urban and suburban areas.

In southwestern Connecticut, Sacred Heart University has developed a new satellite campus on the property that once housed the global headquarters of General Electric, and the city of Stamford has been looking at a building that held the headquarters of Xerox as the potential site for a new elementary school.

There are other recent examples in cities including Atlanta, Houston and Alexandria, Virginia.