Dattner to design Extell’s Riverside school

Extell’s Gary Barnett and a rendering of Riverside Center

The city’s School Construction Authority has tapped Dattner Architects to design the Riverside Center School (P.S./I.S. 342), the new public school at Extell Development’s massive Upper West Side development site.

An announcement from Dattner provides more details about the upcoming “green” pre-K-through-8th grade-school, which will contain more than 20 classrooms as well as art and music rooms, a science suite, library, gym and cafeteria. It will be housed on the first four floors of Atelier Christian de Portzamparc and SLCE’s planned high-rise Tower On West End Avenue, between 60th and 61st streets, and is slated for completion in time for the 2015-2016 school year.

In addition to the school, Riverside Center is ultimately slated to include 2,500 apartments, 20 percent of which will be designated for affordable housing, plus a 250-room hotel and 104,000 square feet of office space.

The project garnered unanimous City Council approval in December after battling its way through the planning stages of the city’s land-use process, during which both Community Board 7 and Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer had demanded a higher concentration of affordable housing units. — Sarabeth Sanders