Shelby County Schools considering moving its headquarters onto Bayer campus

Shelby County Schools could be picking up and moving its headquarters about three miles north.

The school board will vote Tuesday night on a $6.6 million purchase of the Bayer Consumer Health building at 3030 Jackson Ave. The district would own all 43 acres on the grounds and could put all district employees who don't work at a school on one campus.

The campus is next to property the district already owns, which previously housed its central nutrition center until that building suffered major structural issues before last school year. The purchase of the full Bayer campus would solve the problem of where nutrition services should go permanently, board member and facilities committee chairman Billy Orgel said.

The board voted in January to allow Superintendent Dorsey Hopson to begin negotiations to purchase the building. The vote Tuesday would start the process of buying the building, Orgel said.

"This is to start the process of our due diligence," he said. "If you find an issue, you have an out."

The district's current headquarters, at 160 S. Hollywood, has housed the district and the former Memphis City Schools since the 1960s.

As the district grew, Orgel said, it acquired property across the city.

The result is more than a dozen office locations for over 1,000 administrative, facilities, maintenance and nutrition staff across the county. Consolidating those, he said, makes sense.

"If you're running a company, you don't put it in 17 different places," Orgel said.

Hopson said the increased efficiency will result in "huge, huge savings."

"The savings over a few years, the building will pay for itself," he said.

The current facilities used for administrative purposes have nearly $40 million in deferred maintenance, and the drive from some outlying properties to the Hollywood location can be over half an hour.

Hopson said it's not clear yet how much it would cost to make any functional changes to the Bayer building to make it usable for SCS, but it's overall in good condition.

There are environmental concerns, he said, as the area has been industrial, but those will be reviewed before the sale is final.

As such, a timeline for the eventual move, if approved by the board, is unknown.

"There's just a lot of variables," Hopson said.

SCS vacating its building on Hollywood could present a unique opportunity for a developer or the city, Orgel said, which is in the process of figuring out what to do with the adjacent Fairgrounds property.

More: Memphis unveils new $160 million Fairgrounds redevelopment plan

In November, the city unveiled a $160 million plan to convert the Fairgrounds into a youth sports mecca. The plan would transform 155 acres in the heart of the city.

The two campuses are only about three miles away from each other, Orgel noted, but the Bayer property puts the headquarters closer to a high concentration of SCS schools in North Memphis.

Orgel said the opportunity meets much of the criteria SCS would need if trying to relocate.

"We couldn't afford to build what Bayer is selling over there," he said.

Reach Jennifer Pignolet at jennifer.pignolet@commercialappeal.com or on Twitter @JenPignolet.