Wichita school district has potential buyer for Metro-Meridian

Wichita school board members will consider a proposal Monday to sell the former Metro-Meridian Alternative High School to a Wichita couple for $275,000.

The high school, at Maple and Meridian, is one of five vacant buildings the district put up for sale last month.

According to a proposed contract, Erik and Bree Maybee plan to buy the school.

Bree Maybee, a commercial broker for J.P. Weigand & Sons, would not offer many details about the couple’s plans for the school, but said they plan to redevelop it as a residential property.

“We’re really excited about it. It’s something that we’ve been conceptualizing. It’s been in incubation in our heads for several years,” she said Friday.

Erik Maybee owns Maybee Property Inspection in Wichita.

“We’re truly hoping to bring something to the market that we don’t have,” Bree Maybee said. “We’ve been talking about it and … thought the school would be an awesome way to make this work.”

Metro-Meridian, Wichita’s last free-standing alternative high school, closed last year as a cost-cutting measure. Some students transferred to the Chester I. Lewis Academy in northeast Wichita.

The district last month voted to list five vacant school buildings as surplus property, as well as about 17 acres of land adjacent to Jackson Elementary School, at 29th North and Woodlawn.

Metro-Meridian, 301 S. Meridian, was built in 1927. It has 26,393 square feet on 2.1 acres.

This story was originally published May 5, 2017 at 12:53 PM with the headline "Wichita school district has potential buyer for Metro-Meridian."