Community meeting, June 1, 6-8 pm

Original Mount Vernon High School

8333 Richmond Highway, Alexandria

Plans to renovate and repurpose the Original Mount Vernon High School are inching closer to reality, and planners are ready to update the public at the community meeting on June 1.

Planners are calling the additions at the Original Mount Vernon High School "pathways to opportunity," and this includes non-profit programs, a teen/senior center, gym and the Head Start program. It is nearly one year since the last update, and a few of the programs have moved into the former high school space. Now the county is working with a food-related industry to set up a training-related space.

This is all part of Phase I of the plan, and Phase II includes a portion of the plan in the back of the property, away from Richmond Highway.

The school building is an example of Colonial Revival architecture that was originally built in 1939 on land that used to be part of George Washington’s Mount Vernon Estate. The 22-acre property was used as a high school until 1973 and a middle school until 1985 and then was leased to the Islamic Saudi Academy in 1989.

In 1987, the Virginia Department of Historic Resources determined that the high school property was eligible for the National Register of Historic Places. The school was listed on the Virginia Historic Landmarks Register in December 2017, and in the National Registry of Historic Places in May 2018, the county said.