We completely bought that whole line about the Seattle Public School District closing schools to bring the budget into some semblence of balance. We've had our coffee this morning, though, and the fog has been lifted. School closures have nothing to do with the budget - It's all about condos.

Ok, that's complete bullshit that we're putting down to too many cups of coffee this morning. School conversions to condos probably aren't the reason for the school closures, but some of these buildings are going to make one lucky developer a lot of money, regardless. If you don't believe us check out the gorgeous Queen Anne High units, the bastard step-studios of which are about to cost $300,000. Now take a look at some of the buildings that the Superintendant's recommending be closed: Highpoint and Fairmount Park are going to be a tough sell and they'll probably be torn down. Rainier View Elementary, despite having a name that would attract a lot of interest from condo shoppers, doesn't really look like it'll make the cut either. John Marshall, however, looks fantastic, although you can't see a whole lot of it from the picture we found. What do you really need to see besides brick and trees? Condo gold. Emerson Elementary is the clear winner here, though. In the near future when developers start building new construction that's supposed to look like it used to be a school it will look exactly like Emerson. Can we get on a pre-sales list somewhere?