St. Mary’s Academy eyes expansion

St. Mary’s Academy, a close neighbor to Portland State, announced on Thursday possible plans to expand their campus through the purchase of the city block recently vacated by the U.S. Postal Service.

Located on Southwest Fifth Avenue between Mill and Market streets, St. Mary’s is the oldest continuously operating secondary school in Oregon. Founded by 12 Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary in 1859, the school is a Roman Catholic high school for young women.

While the possibility of purchasing the new land was only made public recently, the idea to expand the campus has been on the administration’s agenda for some time, said Mary Ann Albright, director of communications for
St. Mary’s.

“This expansion has been one of our top strategic priorities because we have been seeing an increase in our applicant pool,” Albright said.

“For the past several years our leadership team has been keeping an eye out.”

St. Mary’s has honed in on this particular location because of the proximity to its current campus. “The location is only one block northwest of us,” Albright said.

While the purchase is not final, the transaction has moved beyond talk. “We are in the due diligence phase of purchasing,” Albright said.

Also not final are plans for use of the space. “We do not have concrete plans—no renderings or anything,” Albright said. However, she did say that the space will likely be used for multiple purposes.

“Plans for the use of the new space are for additional instructional space as well as more space for the fine and performing arts and athletics.”

While not directly connected to Portland State in any way, Albright said that the two schools often mingle.

“We are currently doing an engineering competition with PSU,” she said, “which has been a very nice opportunity.”

St. Mary’s also offers its students two PSU challenge courses for credit at Portland State.