By The Numbers

The general public and community haven’t gotten a lot of detail about the plan for a new Lawton Elementary. The best we have are pictures of the most recent site plan for New Lawton. We have some pictures that were made available to the public at the Lawton Open House on March 20, 2025 and were posted to the a2schoolsbond.org site a month afterwards.

We have taken these pictures and scaled their features using the GIS map of the AAPS Lawton property and the City of Ann Arbor Lawton Park property. Scaling was done using the length of the back property line of a bordering neighbor property.

We created 3D models of both the existing Lawton site and the proposed New Lawton site in order to correctly compare the two site plans. Our analysis of the various areas shows that AAPS and their contractors have proposed a site plan for New Lawton that severely reduces outdoor space for both students and the general community.

The major categories of surface area in the site plans are:

Paved areas – parking lots, drop-off lanes, etc.
Transition areas – front of the school circulation area for arriving and departing; combination of sidewalks, paved areas, flower beds, shrubberies, etc.
Outdoor playground areas – play structures, swing sets, outdoor learning, hard surfaces for games, etc.
Grassy areas for recess – open area for general running around, kicking a soccer ball, etc.
Storm water retention areas – necessary as we all know the fields get soggy when it rains!
City park areas – area of the city’s Lawton Park that is open to the general public even during school hours.

Below is a series of comparisons between the existing amount of each category and the amount of each category in the proposed design by AAPS. Click the slides to advance through the slide show.

Here are the numbers that we calculated from our 3D model and used to create the infographics above:

  
    
        Category
        Existing (sq. ft.)
        Proposed (sq. ft.)
        % of Existing
        % Change
      

    
      Driveway, Parking, Drop-off
      26,380
      69,100
      260%
      +160%
    

      Transition Area (front)
      21,159
      112,185
      530%
      +430%
    

      Playground (all grades)
      155,500
      71,040
      45%
      -54%
    

      Grassy Recess Area
      71,880
      0
      0%
      -100%
    

      Total Outdoor Play Area
      227,380
      71,040
      31%
      -69%
    

      Storm Retention
      0
      36,995
      N/A
      N/A
    

      Open City Park Area
      213,280
      154,625
      73%
      -28%
    

      Lit Area (night)
      203,040
      289,320
      143%
      +43%
    

      Dark Night Sky Area
      285,160
      154,625
      54%
      -46%
    

We are confident that our 3D modeling is sufficiently accurate for this reporting. You can see above that each category is proposed to have a major negative shift for Lawton students and the surrounding community. We are losing so much that cannot be replaced until the next time Lawton is rebuilt… which should be well after all of us are gone from this world. We need a totally new plan that responsibly uses the 7.7 acres of land that AAPS already owns and manages for Lawton Elementary.