A new purpose for an empty Lincoln Academy.
A review team spent the last few months going over proposals for new uses for the building, receiving about half a dozen in all.
Monday night the Superintendent passed on his four recommendations for new programs to set up shop in the building.
The former elementary school will house three school district programs, a church program, and an education program for the poor, all pending school board approval.
Davenport Superintendent Art Tate recommends creating space for the district's home school assistance office as well as the stepping stones administrative office.
Tate also recommends opening up the building to Community Action, which offers Head Start, and Children's Village early childhood classrooms.
He's asking for board approval to begin negotiating leases with those groups.
He also recommends the board continue looking into offering space to Progressive Baptist Church, which wants to open a Hope center to provide support services for children and adults.
Once the leases are written and signed, Tate expects the building to be between 75 percent and 100 percent filled.
The district would provide some services to the building as property manager, but Tate says the arrangement could even bring in a small profit for the schools.
"We could, it's really determined, we've never done this before, so we're probably going to have to have a manager, we'll provide custodial service, security, we've got maintenance that we have to do but it looks like we can recoup the cost of anything we have to put into that building," says Tate.
One program that wasn't determined to be a good fit at Lincoln was the Edison learning program.
That group provides a dropout prevention and recovery program.
Tate says the district is interested in bringing that program in, just at a location with a better fit.
