After years of failed deals and a fight over who could buy it, the former Garfield Elementary School in Marinette has a buyer with a housing plan. The Marinette School District board on Monday, Oct. 26, accepted a $218,000 offer from Woda Cooper Companies, which wants to turn the building into housing for people 55 and older (via WLUK Fox 11).
The vote was unanimous, according to the district's Oct. 27 release. The deal hasn't closed yet. The district says the sale still depends on the developer's financing and on closing requirements in the purchase agreement.
Woda Cooper is an affordable housing firm based in Columbus, Ohio. It was founded in 1990, is employee-owned and describes itself as vertically integrated, meaning it handles development, construction and property management in-house. The company says it has employees in 19 states and a $3.25 billion development portfolio.
The idea didn't start with the school district. According to the release, Woda Cooper had been talking with the City of Marinette about the need for senior housing, and the city put the developer in touch with the district. The district says the plan would preserve and restore the building rather than tear it down.
"We are pleased that this proposal offers an opportunity to give the former Garfield Elementary School a new purpose while preserving an important part of our community's history," Superintendent Matthew Smith said in the release.
What isn't public yet is most of what a builder would want to know. Neither the district nor the news coverage gives a unit count, a construction budget, a design team or a start date.
Garfield, on Carney Boulevard, closed at the end of the 2021-22 school year as part of the district's effort to consolidate buildings as enrollment fell.
Selling it turned into a saga. In early 2024, St. Thomas Aquinas Academy, a private Catholic school, made a cash offer of just under $300,000 so it could move its elementary students into the building. The district turned it down over concerns about selling to a competitor, and the property carried a deed restriction barring its use as a school, Fox 11 reported.
Later in 2024 the district accepted a lower offer from a developer, but that deal fell apart, and the district was still trying to recover $55,000 in earnest money in mid-2025. In January 2025, WNCY reported another tentative housing deal, with a closing set for no later than Feb. 10, 2025. That one didn't produce a sale either.
In July 2025, a year after the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty threatened legal action over it, the school board voted 5-4 to lift the deed restriction. By then the empty building had dealt with vandalism and flooding, according to Fox 11.
A project like this would usually lean on outside financing, and the district's release says the sale depends on it. How Woda Cooper plans to pay for the conversion hasn't been made public. The company doesn't appear on the Wisconsin Housing and Economic Development Authority's published applicant list for the 2026 round of competitive 9% housing tax credits. The only Marinette project in that round, a 60-unit family development called Gateway Commons, wasn't funded.
The Garfield project also isn't on the agenda for the City of Marinette Planning Commission's Nov. 4 meeting, so it hasn't reached formal city review yet.
Why it matters for Contractors
Right now this is a sale, not a job. With financing still pending and no city filings, there's nothing to bid. But it's worth tracking if you work in Marinette or across the river in Menominee.
Converting an old school into apartments is renovation-heavy work: interior demolition, framing new units inside classroom walls, plumbing and electrical runs for kitchens and baths, HVAC changes, accessibility upgrades and repairs from any water damage. That's the kind of scope where small local subs often land pieces of the work, even when the general contractor comes from out of state.
Since Woda Cooper builds through its own construction arm, the people to get in front of will likely be its construction managers once financing is set. Watch the Marinette Planning Commission and Common Council agendas for site plan, zoning or development agreement items, and check WHEDA's tax credit lists in future rounds. When the project shows up there, the unit count and timeline should follow.