For rent: twenty-seven 1,000-square-foot commercial pads. Easy access off Eureka Road.

May evoke memories of being chastised for chewing gum.

Eureka Elementary still looks the same, but officials hope it will soon be on its way to becoming an adult school. Or an art studio. Or a fire department headquarters.

The 84-year-old campus could be on the rental market by the end of the summer following its closure earlier this month, Superintendent Tim McCarty said. The Eureka Union School District shuttered the school, its oldest facility, after years of declining enrollment.

“There’s a lot of great opportunities for that building,” said Valisa Schmidley, a Granite Bay resident and agent with Keller Williams Realty. “It’s a unique property and it’s going to appeal to a specific tenant.”

Putting the school up for rent isn’t as easy as posting a sign.

According to state law, the district must convene an advisory committee in advance to take local input. The task force is ultimately charged with determining what uses are acceptable for the property.

“The reason behind this is it’s sort of like an environmental impact report,” McCarty said. “It’s to make sure you don’t have a program that violates the spirit of the community.”

And the law makes clear that some potential tenants are given priority. Those include local government agencies such as colleges, the county office of education or fire departments, McCarty said.

“Then at that point we can go into leasing the campus if there’s no interest,” he said.

But with 2.1 million square feet of vacant commercial space in south Placer, finding interested tenants for any property is no simple feat.

“There’s a lot of vacancy and that’s going to make it difficult,” said Scott Rush, a vice president at CB Richard Ellis in Roseville.

Still, there’s one market to which Eureka should appeal: other schools.

Because the site is already zoned for a school, a coveted land use designation, “Their best chance right now is to get a private school,” said Rush, who has worked on school deals.

That might make administrators nervous if a private or charter school that caters to kindergarten through eighth-grade shows interest. Those businesses tend to pilfer district attendance, further adding to financial woes.

“What would be ideal is a technical school, but most of those schools all want to be right on the freeway,” Rush said.

Schmidley, whose children attended the Eureka district, agreed that traditional office tenants would probably not show much interest in the space. But she said it could hold strong appeal for creative businesses that need a lot of space, such as a children’s art school or senior enrichment center.

“You’ve got food service capabilities there. Recreation capabilities there. Classrooms already set up for learning,” she said.

“It is warmly regarded by this community and I’d like to see it used for the good of kids,” Schmidley added. “If I could have anything go in that space, it would be a performing arts school.”