Facilities

Brownsville Ascend Charter School will move during the 2012-2013 school year to its permanent facility at the redeveloped Loews Pitkin Theater. The ambitious adaptive re-use project by POKO Partners, LLC will transform the historic building, at the heart of the Pitkin retail corridor, to accommodate the Brownsville Ascend lower and middle schools and major retailers. Goldman Sachs Urban Investment Group, Seedco Financial Services, Nonprofit Finance Fund, Jonathan Rose Companies, and the Carver Community Development Corporation are financing the $42 million, 90,000-foot project.

After decades of being the cultural center of the community, the theater entered into a long period of decline and eventually closed in 1969. The redevelopment preserves architectural details, including the terra-cotta ornamentation, while providing light-filled spaces to support the school and other new uses of the building. A completely new interior structure, built with state-of-the-art steel, concrete, and masonry systems, will be constructed within the existing shell. New, high-efficiency mechanical and lighting systems are part of an extensive program of green building features that will take this building to the forefront of 21st-century building technology.