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Former Wichita School Converted Into Artist Space

Wichita’s former Metro-Boulevard Alternative High School is re-opening Friday as an art gallery and studio space.

The new Studio School has 16 art studios, a meeting space, an art gallery and a commercial kitchen.

Owner Logan Pajunen purchased the building, near Grove and Lincoln in south Wichita, last year from Wichita Public Schools. The district closed Metro-Boulevard Alternative High School, which had also once been Willard Elementary, in 2012.

Pajunen says he wanted to create a place for artists that was affordable, but still adjacent to downtown Wichita and the Commerce Street art district.

"I'm hoping I can be complementary to that," he says, "so that people who want to have exciting, fun studios don't have to go out to Andover, or Augusta, or Derby, or a spare bedroom in their home. They can still stay in the city where the energy is and be close to all that, but not have to spend a fortune."

Pajunen says the new space maintains the character of the building, as well as the role it once played in the community.

“I think this is a really welcome use for a school," he says. "It was a neighborhood anchor when it was in operation first as an elementary and then as a high school, and I hope to for it to be not only a neighborhood but a city anchor when I’m done with it.”

Studio School will be open for tours and demonstrations as part of Final Friday.

Follow Nadya Faulx on Twitter @NadyaFaulx. To contact KMUW News or to send in a news tip, reach us at news@kmuw.org.

Nadya Faulx is KMUW's Digital News Editor and Reporter, which means she splits her time between working on-air and working online, managing news on KMUW.org, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. She joined KMUW in 2015 after working for a newspaper in western North Dakota. Before that she was a diversity intern at NPR in Washington, D.C.