# City Hall: School District to Sell Vacant Buildings

[![The shuttered Joseph C. Ferguson Elementary School on the 2000 block of North 7th Street. ](https://philadelphianeighborhoods.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/BTN6-577x384.jpg)](https://phillyn-media.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/26002043/BTN6.jpg)Mayor Michael Nutter, flanked by members of City Council, announced last week that the city will sell vacant School District properties, partially to raise the $50 million promised to the District earlier this year. Mark McDonald, a spokesman for the mayor, said the School District would be working with the commerce department and [Philadelphia Industrial Development Coalition](https://www.pidc-pa.org/) to sell the properties. “The School District will be working with the city Commerce Department and the quasi-public Philadelphia Industrial Development Coalition to market and sell surplus school properties following the School District’s adaptive re-use policy, which was amended in late august by the \[School Reform Commission\],” McDonald said. A website listing the properties available will go online soon, with requests for qualification, McDonald continued. “\[Profits\] will have to be anything above $61 million,” School District spokesman Fernando Gallard said. "Anything above the $61 million that we can get in revenues from sales of properties for this fiscal year, we’ll be able to use to put back resources in schools."