The inside-and-out rehabilitation of Globe’s former Hill Street School at 450 S. Hill St., slated to become an affordable senior housing complex, got underway about a week ago. Workers have started cleaning out the old school building and removing asphalt to prepare for a new three-story structure.

The Hill Street School renovation is a project of developer Gorman & Company, a Wisconsin-based firm whose work includes renovating historic buildings for reuse – and the school certainly qualifies as historic. Built in 1920, it was designed by Southwestern architects Trost & Trost, whose works include the Gadsden Hotel in Douglas. Gorman & Company plans to create 64  affordable senior housing units at the site – 26 in the former school building and 38 in the new three-story building. In June 2022 the developer received approximately $2.5 million in federal and state tax credits, and they closed on the property at the end of May 2023. Their plans also include a green space highlighting the history of Hill Street School, along with a sidewalk and parking spaces along Devereaux Street.

“It’s exciting to see. It’s such a welcome addition to downtown and to our community,” said City of Globe Economic and Community Development Director Linda Oddonetto, who added that the project was at “full steam ahead.”

Dan Klocke, senior project development manager with Gorman & Company, said this phase of the rehabilitation would take a couple of months, with a lot of underground utility work to be done. He said there have been no surprise discoveries to this point – “We knew what was there” – but a few could be expected along the way. The next steps will be creating the foundation and framing for the new building, and moving to restore the old one. “We’re really excited that we can start working on this building and bring it back to its glory days,” Klocke said.