Hawken Nido 3.jpg

Hawken School is expanding to the west side of Cleveland. The suburban East Side private school has merged with Birchwood School in the West Park neighborhood and has tied up real estate for an early-childhood center in the Gordon Square Arts District. This image shows the Nido central community space in Hawken's existing early childhood center in Lyndhurst.

(Hawken School)

CLEVELAND, Ohio - After a century of educating students in the eastern suburbs, a prominent private school is expanding westward into Cleveland, placing a bet on urban revival.

Hawken School formalized a merger Monday with Birchwood School, an independent elementary school on West 140th Street in the West Park neighborhood. And in a separate deal, Hawken has tied up 1.5 acres in the Gordon Square Arts District for an early-childhood center that could open in mid-2018, if not sooner.

The move reflects changing demographics on the city's near-west side and Hawken's desire to access a wider pipeline of potential pupils. D. Scott Looney, Hawken's head of school, pointed out that population figures are fairly stagnant for the eastern suburbs around Gates Mills, where Hawken's high school is located, and Lyndhurst, home to its elementary school. Meanwhile, downtown Cleveland and neighborhoods to the west are attracting more young people and college-educated adults, boosting real estate values and demand for services.

"We're a day school, so our future relies on being somewhere with growth and families who value what we do," Looney said.

Birchwood School was founded in 1984 by parents who wanted a different sort of independent education option for their children. Now the school is becoming a division of Hawken, with its own budget, tuition scale, leadership and succession plan.

Hawken established a presence in Cleveland in 2010, when the school opened a sort of learning lab in a restored mansion in University Circle. But Birchwood - renamed Birchwood School of Hawken - is not a satellite building. It's an existing preschool-to-eighth-grade program, founded by Helene and Chuck Debelak in 1984.

No money changed hands. Looney and Debelak stressed that the merger, in which Hawken took on the smaller school's assets, liabilities and contracts, won't alter daily life at Birchwood. The campuses will maintain separate budgets and different tuition scales - another important aspect of Hawken's efforts to broaden its base.

This year, Birchwood costs $6,500 for five mornings of weekly preschool, to Hawken's $9,616. Eighth-grade tuition at Birchwood is close to $14,400, half of what Hawken charges.

Birchwood's setting, a former Catholic school building, is decidedly spare compared with Hawken's campuses, particularly the recently renovated and expanded upper school. Nearly 69 percent of Hawken's 1,000-plus students are white. At Birchwood, the majority - 65 percent - of just over 200 students come from non-white families.

But the schools were built around similar educational philosophies. Once the Debelaks and Looney began talking seriously about a merger, they found ample common ground.

"The basic concept is probably as old as Aristotle, at least," Chuck Debelak said. "You cultivate people to be beautiful and productive and therefore fulfilled as a human being. At Birchwood, we call it becoming a great person. Kids get that. It's not money. It's not prestige."

Eighth graders at Birchwood now automatically will be accepted at Hawken's upper school. If plans for the early-childhood center move forward, children might begin their journey with Hawken at 18 months old in Gordon Square, make their way to Birchwood and eventually ride a shuttle to the eastern suburbs for high school.

Hawken has signed a purchase agreement on the Saigon Plaza building, at 5400 Detroit Ave., and surrounding properties. The building could become an early-childhood center, accepting children ranging from 18 months to preschool, by mid-2018 or earlier.

The Birchwood merger came about as Hawken was considering its next run of growth and the Debelaks were looking at ways to preserve their school and their succession plan, to hand the reins to their daughter Christine in a few years.

The genesis of the Gordon Square investment, which Hawken describes as phase two of its westward expansion, was different. That deal resulted from conversations with persistent parents in Tremont who wanted more childcare choices.

The result: Hawken recently signed a purchase agreement for Saigon Plaza, at 5400 Detroit Ave., and several surrounding properties owned by Gia Hoa Ryan. The $1.2 million purchase is scheduled to take place in January.

Hawken expects to renovate the main building and to clear the surrounding parcels for a pick-up and drop-off line, a playground and parking. Construction might be complete as early as fall 2017, though Looney said summer of 2018 seems like a more realistic timeline. The project hinges on enthusiasm from parents.

"We needed to secure property before we could go to the market and discuss whether there was an interest in doing this," he said. "When we announce this, it's possible that the interest that we think might be there won't be. But from our research, it seems like it is."

The number of children downtown and on the near-west side actually fell from 2000 to 2013, according to the Center for Population Dynamics at Cleveland State University. But those areas are attracting Millennials with more education and money to spend. Some young families want to stay, but they're stymied by long waiting lists or skeptical about their current options.

Councilman Matt Zone, who represents the Gordon Square area, pointed out that there are early-childhood programs run by Catholic schools and the Centers for Families and Children, which primarily caters to low-income families. But additional choices are important, he said, as hundreds of new residences debut at projects such as Battery Park at West 73rd Street and the Edison apartments at West 58th Street.

"We have more and more people moving into the neighborhood of all incomes," said Carrie Carpenter, executive director of the Gordon Square Arts District. "We're thrilled. Saigon Plaza has been a great event venue in the neighborhood, but most days it's not active in any way. So it will be great to have new life continuing to develop east down Detroit."

Hawken looked at Ohio City but encountered traffic challenges. In Tremont, it was tough to find a large enough site at a palatable price, said Conor Coakley of the CBRE Group, Inc., real estate brokerage, who represented the school.

"I think we hit a home run on this one," he said of the Gordon Square location. "The seller was very passionate about the building because she had redone it herself over the past 25 years. When she saw the pictures of [Hawken's] early childhood center in Lyndhurst and saw the pictures of the next iteration of the building, that really got her excited."

Just one mile to the east, the Music Settlement - a University Circle institution tracking similar demographic trends - plans to open an Ohio City campus in late summer 2018. That school will provide early-childhood education, music instruction and music therapy on the first floor of an apartment building being constructed at West 25th Street and Detroit Avenue.

"There's always room for more," said Adrienne Linnick, a 33-year-old mother of two who joined other parents in encouraging Hawken to consider a west-side presence.

Hawken already operates an early-childhood center at the school's Lyndhurst campus, pictured here. The Gordon Square center could house 80 to 100 children at any given time.

Linnick and her husband, Seth, are lawyers who moved to Cleveland for work and built a house in Tremont a few years ago. He works downtown. She's been staying at home with their two-year-old son and one-month-old daughter. The Linnicks don't want to move, and they're hoping to avoid driving to Lakewood, Cleveland Heights or another city for childcare and, later, school.

"Even the public options that are close to us, we're not necessarily a shoo-in for them," she said, referring to Tremont Montessori, scheduled to be rebuilt, and the popular Campus International school in downtown Cleveland. "If we want to stay in the neighborhood, private is something that we're going to have to consider as probably our first option."

Kristie Beck and Todd Burger, also Tremont residents, have a similar quandary with their daughters, four and two. Both parents work. They have a nanny. Burger drops the girls off at Ruffing Montessori School in Cleveland Heights on his way to work. They looked at programs in Cleveland but didn't feel comfortable with their choices.

They're hoping that Hawken comes through.

"We like living in the city," Beck said. "We feel there's a lot of value to our kids growing up in an urban environment. There are 15 kids within 1,000 feet of us."