One of Provo City School District’s oldest school buildings may be headed for demolition. 

The district has decided to enter into a letter of intent with Brigham Young University to exchange the land that Wasatch Elementary School currently sits on with a nearby property, currently owned by BYU. 

Although no official contract has yet been signed, the agreement is in its final stages according to Todd Hollingshead, the media relations manager at BYU

“Provo City School District is finalizing an agreement to exchange the district’s Wasatch Elementary School property with a nearby property owned by Brigham Young University,” Hollingshead said. “The exchange would allow the district to rebuild the aging elementary school in a new location while providing the university with property adjacent to existing campus facilities.”

Wasatch Elementary currently sits at 1080 N. 900 E. in Provo and is surrounded by BYU’s John Taylor Building, Army ROTC and Grounds Office. With this deal, Provo School District would receive money from BYU and land east of Wasatch Elementary’s current location for a new school building. 

“The district will build a new Wasatch Elementary School on the property being acquired from BYU that sits on Locust Lane. BYU has agreed to allow our students to remain in the current school until the new school is completed,” Caleb Price, the director of communications for Provo City School District, said. “Once the students move into the new school, the current Wasatch property will belong to BYU and they will use it how they see fit.”

It is still being worked out how much money the school district will make from the sale and how that money will be used, but according to Price, a majority of it will go back into constructing a new school building. 

“The majority of it is a land-swap between the two properties, and then BYU will be providing some additional payment, but what that final amount is we won’t know until after the actual offer is signed,” Price said. “In the grand scheme of the whole project it is going to be a very minimal amount, it would be put into that project somewhere.”

Wasatch Elementary School was built in 1949. In 2019, voters rejected a $245 million bond question to rebuild Wasatch Elementary and Dixon Middle School.    

“The Wasatch community has been eager to have an updated school and the news has been received very favorably in the community,” Price said.

Newsletter