Rachel Branstrom Daily Press The building at 2827 and 2831 N. Lincoln Road, formerly occupied by Michigan Works! in the front half and Lyme Great Lakes Timberlands in the rear, is going to become the new site of Escanaba Area Public Schools Student Success Center. The school district purchased the building last month.

ESCANABA — Escanaba Area Public Schools recently purchased property on North Lincoln Road with plans to relocate their Student Success Center (SSC) — an alternative, hybrid education option for those students for whom traditional schooling is not feasible or ideal — into the new building by next year. At present, the Escanaba SSC is housed within the facilities of the Delta-Schoolcraft Intermediate School District (ISD) on 3rd Avenue South. The ISD, which provides career and technical education to students from high schools around the area, has plans to expand and restructure its current site, which is what led Escanaba to seek a new home for its SSC.

Both schools will be actually be reclaiming some of their own space when all the shuffling is done. The ISD currently rents space from Escanaba Area Public Schools to act as their welding shop. It has been located inside the high school but won’t be for much longer.

“We’re going to vacate that space,” explained DSISD Director of Career and Technical Education Trent Bellingar. “We’re going to add onto our existing facility where the Escanaba Student Success Center was … to include a new welding facility.”

Bellingar said that the space the ISD has been using has 11 dedicated welding stations; plans for the expansion double that capacity. As it’s to be located in the same building as the rest of the ISD classes, between sites for two other popular programs, Bellingar said, “We’re going to call it our manufacturing center, because we’ll be able to have the engineering students work with the welding and machining students to work on projects and understand each aspect of the manufacturing process.”

Additionally, the new space will likely include overhead doors for access for larger projects and vehicles in addition to a cleaner and more efficient ventilation system.

As of Wednesday, Jan. 31, ISD Superintendent Doug Leisenring said that the cost of the project and how it would be funded was yet to be determined. The school board should broach the subject at its next meeting on Feb. 8.

Just as the ISD can look forward to tailoring their building to their specific needs, Escanaba Area Public Schools will also enjoy the benefits of owning the property their Student Success Center will be moving into.

The building at 2827 and 2831 N. Lincoln Road, formerly occupied by Michigan Works! in the front half and Lyme Great Lakes Timberlands in the rear, is located between UPutt Family Fun Center and Camping World. The property is at the corner of Lincoln Road (U.S. 2 and 41) and 29th Avenue North, with its parking lot between the latter street and the building. Owned by Bosk Properties until Escanaba Area Public Schools purchased it on December 29, 2023, the site was vacant for some time.

Escanaba Area Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Coby Fletcher said he is pleased with what the space provides and looks forward to its conversion into the home of the SSC.

Describing the hybrid program, Fletcher explained that the majority of the SSC curriculum is online and that an open floor plan is ideal for accommodating many computer stations where close to 100 students may work under the supervision of about five or six adults.

Fletcher said that before finding the Bosk property, the school district had looked at a few others for sale in Escanaba that would have required much more work in order to fit the bill. The one that won he called “perfect” for its open space, internet access, and overall state. “It fit our needs and would only require minimal, mainly cosmetic changes to make it useable for the program,” he said.

The two parts of the building are each a little over 5,000 square feet. They’re connected and appear to be one large unit from the outside, except that there are two entrances and two addresses. The first — the east half, closest to the highway, built in 1978 — will be for the SSC and already offers more than their current space does.

“It came with a little kitchen, for example,” said Fletcher. “And one of the things that they work with the students on in this program is — how do you budget and plan for meals? And then how do you actually cook and prepare meals? So there’s a little more life skills teaching that goes on in these programs, and we were able to renovate the kitchen to meet that need, which is not something that’s easy to do over in the ISD building. (There are) some spaces in here that we’re going to be able to renovate to put in a washer and a dryer. Same type of life skills focus.”

He explained that while the SSC covers the same academic subjects that traditional students are taught, additional offerings set SSC enrollees up with other necessities because “a lot of these kids come from environments that are much more challenging than what our regular school population comes from.”

Fletcher said that a shower will be put into the new facility as well.

As for the other side of the building — the western addition, built in 1994 and slightly larger than the first — its fate is still up in the air, but Fletcher said that they are “seriously” discussing the possibility of turning it into childcare that may be offered first to school employees and then the public. However, those talks are preliminary as the future of the SSC takes priority.

Escanaba Area Public Schools purchased the North Lincoln Road property for a price just shy of $700,000, which Fletcher said they were able to pay because of the district’s conservative budgeting. They learned several years ago that sinking fund millages weren’t working, so the funds being used for this project have already been gathered and won’t cost the taxpayers anything additional.

“When we know we have things on the horizon, it’s just our practice to save and pay cash,” Fletcher said, pointing to a few other past projects and another upcoming one to put in a chiller at Lemmer Elementary School.

He said that they anticipate the renovations to the recently acquired building to run about a million dollars.