The $25,000 Question: Where Olympia's New High School Should Stand
A proposed exchange for the Blinn block on Main Street would give the district room for a full-block school—but cost $12,000 to $15,000 more.
Talk of exchanging sites for a high school building is still going on, the site mostly talked of being the Blinn block on Main Street. It is now the property of M. O. Sullivan, of Portland, who holds it at $25,000. If an exchange is made the district will probably be required to pay a difference of from $12,000 to $15,000. Those who favor having an entire block say that we are now building for the future, and that there is ground sufficient to put up other buildings or to make additions to the building erected this summer. Friends of the present site say there is room enough; that it is accessible to street car lines from the east and west sides and from Tumwater. If the people want to vote upon the subject they should not delay action, as the board is now arranging for plans and the plan of a building erected on a half block must necessarily be different from that of one erected in the centre of an entire block.
“Those who favor having an entire block say that we are now building for the future.”
School siting fights are still about land, cost and access: a $25,000 parcel and a $15,000 difference in 1892 look like today's debates over school capacity, transit and whether public land should be sold or kept. The question of whether to build for the future or use what you have is evergreen.
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