Long Abandoned High School Outside Traverse City For Sale Less than $200k

The days of students passing through the halls of Benzonia High School are decades in the past. However, the building had held on, abandoned, after the area villages combined school districts.

Now the building has been up for sale for over a year. At less than $200,000 it seems quite a bargain based on real estate prices in northwest lower Michigan.

The high school sits on the northern edge of the village of Benzonia about thirty miles southwest of Traverse City and a neighbor to the Benzie County seat of Beulah and its picturesque Crystal Lake.

The school closed in 1964 after four districts combined to form the Benzie Central Schools.

The building has been on the market, as of this writing, for about a year and a half at 472 days. The listing describes:

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Historic school building. Potential for an apartment building or other commercial project. Approx. 16,500 sq ft. in this multi-level building. Plenty of off road parking, or room to expand. Zoned Commercial. Aprox 1.7 acres on a corner lot with frontage on a Village maintained paved road.

The building often catches the eye as it can just be seen as US 31 skirts by a block away. Photos were shared to the Abandoned, Old and Interesting Places in Michigan Facebook group where a commenter gave a little back story:

That is only the old Benzonia High School Gym. The old wood structure was torn down, the sliding doors is the passthrough from the old school classrooms to the gym. School consolidation discontinued use of the building.

Certainly, the potential is there to bring life back to the former school.

Take a look inside and around what's left of Benzonia High School:

More Michigan to Explore

Benzonia and Beulah, while oddities for names are words most people can wrap their tongues around. Check out these Michigan town name tongue twisters.