In this age of declining enrollments, alternatives exist to boarding up schools that are no longer being fully utilized. This paper discusses such alternatives by describing the situation in a Minnesota school district. Of the four elementary school buildings closed in St. Louis Park in the past five years, one was sold to a developer, two are currently operating as community centers, and a fourth is being developed into a senior citizen center. The paper details the activities in each of the centers and then lists several funding approaches used by the district to make the centers self-supporting. The paper concludes that school officials should seek creative approaches to the utilization or disposal of closed school buildings. Otherwise, the buildings serve as painful reminders of educational and community decline. (Author/LD)