Baker School District begins turning former Central Building site into lawn

Workers had already begun preparing the former Central Building site near Baker Middle School, where Baker School District Superintendent Casey Hallgarth wants to turn an expanse of district-owned dirt into one of Baker City’s biggest lawns. The move puts a visible patch of land in the middle of town on a short-term path toward upkeep instead of sitting vacant.

The district had already said it planned to plant grass there, but the start of site preparation shows the idea has moved beyond discussion. For a property that was left after Baker City’s historic Central Building was gutted by an arson fire in 2024, grass is the simplest way to change the look of the site while the district decides what comes next.

That longer decision has been underway for more than a year. On March 12, 2025, the Baker School District planned to appoint a subcommittee to consider options for the Central Building property, signaling that the land’s future was never settled as a single redevelopment project. The grass plan now sits inside that broader process, with the district making the site usable and easier to maintain before any permanent use is chosen.

Hallgarth has been the key district official behind that direction since the Baker School Board hired him as superintendent in March 2024. The board later boosted his salary by 18% in June 2025, further underscoring how much of the district’s property and facilities decision-making now runs through his office. A lawn is a modest step compared with rebuilding or selling the site, but it still requires money, labor and continued maintenance.

The site’s location near Baker Middle School makes the change especially visible for students, staff and neighbors who pass it every day. Instead of an open dirt lot, the district is choosing a maintained landscape that could reduce dust and make the property look less like an unused parcel.

The district had already put the grass plan on the record earlier in the spring, and the work now underway suggests it is treating the site as an asset to be managed, not a space to be left behind. Until the subcommittee’s broader review produces a permanent direction, the former Central Building site is being turned into lawn first and into something else later.