School-To-Housing Project Breaks Ground In Austin
A former school in the Govalle neighborhood of East Austin is being turned into a mixed-income multifamily development, the Austin Business Journal reported.
NRP Group, a Cleveland-based developer, broke ground on Phase 1 of a 675-unit mixed-income apartment development at the end of February. This comes after the developer worked for several years with the Austin Independent School District to make the project happen.
It took a creative capital stack to bring the development to this point. AISD maintains ownership of the land, helping the project receive a property tax exemption. Goldman Sachs’ Urban Investment Group contributed more than $60M, and Clarion Partners contributed an undisclosed sum.
The new site will comprise two apartment buildings with 675 units, half of which will be marked as income-restricted. Phase 1, which is expected to be completed in 2028, will deliver 341 units and cost approximately $93M, NRP's Vice President of Development Nick Walsh told ABJ.
The remaining 334 units in the second phase should begin construction later this year. Some 270 of the units will be saved for people making 80% of the area median family income, and 68 are for people earning 60% of the local median, ABJ reported.
The district undertook the housing project to ensure it would be financially accessible for its school teachers and staff members. When preleasing begins in 2027, district employees will get priority leasing with waived application fees.
The site was previously a junior high school, an elementary school and, most recently, an alternative learning center.
A new alternative learning facility will be included in the development and is expected to be ready for the 2028-29 school year. The development will also include green space and a public art display.
AISD selected NRP as the developer for the project in November 2023. Throughout 2024, the site went through rezoning. The Austin City Council approved a final plan for the development in August 2025.
Enrollment at AISD campuses recently dropped to the lowest level in more than 30 years. After losing 10K students over the past decade, AISD released a plan in 2025 to consolidate its schools. The district aims to close 10 campuses before the 2026-27 school year.
Overall, AISD’s prolonged enrollment problems mirror a national trend of declining public school enrollment. The National Center for Education Statistics estimates that nationwide enrollment will drop by 2.7M students by the 2031-32 school year.
This trend has created a string of abandoned school buildings across the country. School-to-apartment conversions were the fastest-growing type of school reuse project in 2024, with nearly 2K apartments created from former school buildings across the U.S. that year, according to RentCafe data.
Many of the abandoned schools are centrally located, making them good candidates for housing. As Goldman Sachs UIG Chair Asahi Pompey told ABJ, the new Austin project will allow middle-income working households to “stay close to the areas in which they work,” offering community benefits that “cannot be underestimated.”
