Northwest Montgomery Village Center Foundation Community Design Workshop Summary : Exploring the Reuse of Prices Fork Elementary School

The current Prices Fork Elementary School, built in 1952, will soon be closed and replaced with a new school that is being built just a few blocks down the road. Citizens of the communities in Northwest Montgomery County have come together in an effort to save the Prices Fork Elementary School and transform it into a Village Center that will serve people of all ages in NW Montgomery County. A non-profit foundation – the Northwest Montgomery Village Center Foundation (NWMVCF) – has formed to help mold the vision for the reuse of the school and bring it forward to realization! The Community Design Assistance Center, partnered with NWMVCF to host this design workshop at Prices Fork Elementary School on October 28th, 2010 to gather additional ideas from the community and develop an array of preliminary design options for the reuse of the site. Goals for the design workshop included:

• For citizens to be able to partner with designers to see the school as a space with potential!
• To think out of the box
• To think of ways the site can serve as a HUB for the community, a private/public partnership
• For citizens to sign up to help move things forward!

Virginia Tech students and local design professionals partnered with community members, working in groups to explore ideas for the reuse of the school. Each group discussed ideas and preferences for the and then documented that discussion graphically in plan and sketch form.