Camas School District seeks to lease former middle school building, sell 20 acres

The Camas School District has reached agreements with a Vancouver-based commercial real estate company to sell a 20-acre piece of unused property and lease the building that formerly housed Odyssey Middle School.

The Camas school board approved the agreements with the Fuller Group during its Dec. 8 meeting.

“We’re not in a growth mode,” Camas Superintendent John Anzalone said. “It’s time to start moving on some properties.”

In 2018, the district bought what’s colloquially known as the “Karcher property” at the northwest intersection of Northwest Parker Street and Pacific Rim Boulevard with the intention of building a new school on the lot’s 12-acre section of developable land. Those plans changed as a result of the district’s decreasing enrollment, which has dropped by about 400 students since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“It’s just been sitting there empty,” Anzalone said. “Nothing’s going on there right now.”

The property is zoned commercial but may be rezoned to residential by the city of Camas in 2026, said Anzalone, who added that the district can market the property and gather potential buyers but cannot finalize the sale until rezoning is complete.

The district aims to use the money from the sale for various capital projects, including a new roof at Camas High School, renovations to Doc Harris Field and the construction of a new tennis facility.

“Net proceeds from a sale can’t be brought into the general budget,” Anzalone said. “That’s strictly capital money, so we can use some of it to do some upkeep and the projects that we have in the queue.”

The district plans to lease the building that formerly housed Odyssey Middle School — previously known as the “Sharp building” — to education-focused tenants, Anzalone said.

The district combined its two project-based learning schools into a single sixth-12 school earlier this year, with Odyssey students and staff moving into the adjacent Discovery High School building.

“We want (the tenants) to be people that are going to look out for the best interests of the school district,” Anzalone said. “We’re not looking for tattoo parlors and vape shops. No offense to them, but that’s just not necessarily conducive to property that the district owns or is going to rent out. There’s a lot of people knocking on our door already.”

The district can put funds generated from a lease into its general fund, Anzalone said.