Minnehaha Academy is looking at the former Sanford-Brown College campus in Mendota Heights to house its high school students, who were displaced by an Aug. 2 natural gas explosion that leveled part of the school, killed two people and injured nine.
The Minneapolis private Christian school is asking city officials to expedite an interim-use permit that would allow it to use the space for about 350 students in grades nine through 12.
The site is in the 1300 block of Mendota Heights Road, a few blocks north and east of the Pilot Knob Road exit off Interstate 494. It’s 8 miles south of the Minnehaha campus at 3100 West River Parkway.
The city’s planning commission will consider the request Wednesday night, followed by the city council in a special meeting immediately afterward.
Jason Wenschlag, principal of Minnehaha’s upper school, said a lease for the building is contingent on approvals from the city.
School representatives and staff came up with a list of about a dozen viable sites, and the former Brown College meets their three top criteria, Wenschlag said.
“I think our priorities were to maintain some proximity to our south campus, because that’s important to us,” he said. “It was important to keep everyone together in one building — 9th through 12th. And a third aspect was that it was critical that we are able to maintain a strong academic program with a quality experience for our kids.”
The vacated college space comprises 55,000 square feet, and the site has about 270 parking spaces.
In May 2015, Career Education Corp. of Chicago announced that it would “teach out” its 14 Sanford-Brown colleges across the country. The last remaining Brown students occupied the Mendota Heights campus in June.
Minnehaha has a total enrollment of about 825 students in preschool through 12th grade.
The upper campus houses grades 9-12, while elementary and middle school students are housed at the lower campus about a mile south on West River Parkway.
Construction crews and contractors have been working inside the former Brown building trying to get it retrofitted for the school’s planned Sept. 5 opening, said Tim Benetti, the city’s community development director.
“There has been this sort of expedited process with this, just because of the need and the short time frame,” he said. “They want to get their teachers and staff in there by Sept. 1.”
School officials toured several potential sites across the metro and appeared to be pleased with what they saw with the Brown building, Benetti said.
“Brown is different from a high school setting, of course, but all the rooms are there and there’s a nice little student lounge area, a library and dedicated rooms — even a dedicated bookstore and admin office space,” he said. “So it seemed this would be a very reasonable place … but they’re still doing a heck of a lot of work to make this happen.”
Because of the unknown schedule of rebuilding, it is unclear whether Minnehaha would use the former Brown College building for one or two years, Wenschlag said.
“Nothing has happened on our current site in terms of demolition and things like that,” he said. “We don’t know what parts are going to be salvaged. We know that our athletics center and our fine arts space are both pretty clear right now. We can’t use them yet because there aren’t utilities running to both spaces, but they’re going to be salvaged for sure.”
According to a preliminary report released Monday by the National Transportation Safety Board, a maintenance worker at the school smelled natural gas and used a radio to tell others to evacuate less than a minute before the Aug. 2. blast.
In the aftermath, the NTSB questioned a father-son team employed by Eagan-based Master Mechanical Inc., which was contracted by CenterPoint Energy to move a gas meter from the basement of a school building to an outside location.
Killed in the morning explosion were receptionist Ruth Berg, 47, and custodian John Carlson, 82. Among those injured was soccer coach Bryan Duffey, who was critically hurt and still hospitalized Tuesday in satisfactory condition.