Last year, developer Ron Herscho completed massive new residential projects in Far Rockaway, Queens, that brought more than 300 families to an overcrowded elementary school district. So the builder decided he would do something about the full classrooms.
Hershco, the president of United Homes, decided to independently build an annex to Public School 43, which became a $2.5 million center for 200 pre-kindergarten and kindergarten students. He said he needed to respond directly after adding dozens of two-family homes, townhouses, and apartments to the area.
“If you make your bread and butter in the area, I think it’s important to do something in the community,” he said. “I’m creating all that traffic.”
Throughout the city — from Lower Manhattan to the far East 40s to Williamsburg to Downtown Brooklyn — massive amounts of new residential development promise to add new families and children to already overcrowded school districts.
While little has been done to address the looming problem at the city and state level amid governmental infighting, some private schools have opened up to alleviate the crunch, and there are various creative proposals for ways to add school space.
Varied approaches
Nowhere is the prospect of overcrowding as a result of new residential development more clearly visible than in Lower Manhattan.
P.S. 234 on Greenwich Street in Tribeca is a red brick elementary schoolhouse with an excellent reputation. The facade is decorated with historical plaques that depict an almost unreal Manhattan, replete with horses, houses, and markets. But the surrounding neighborhood, which has served as a place of big business, has now become a place of big living. Consequently, a neighborhood school is facing a very real problem: overcrowding.
P.S. 234 currently accommodates 700 students — 138 more than it should, according to the Department of Education.
Just down the block at 101 Warren Street, the ground is being primed for more classmates.
Louise Sunshine of Corcoran Sunshine Marketing Group has called the luxury residence 101 Warren Street ”a world unto itself.” Skidmore, Owings & Merrill of Time Warner Center fame designed the mixed-use housing and retail enclave to include 228 condominiums (109 with two or more bedrooms) and 162 rental units on 90,565 square feet of land, which will also host indoor and outdoor play areas, as well as a miniature pine forest and requisite Whole Foods outlet .
It’s clear: Families are coming.
The building’s Web site depicts the gates of P.S. 234. The school, after all, has among the highest test scores in the city. But with a sacrificed computer lab and increased class sizes, P.S. 234 can’t afford to welcome any more students.
Jonathan Levine is a member of the District 2 Community Education Council, which oversees Tribeca, and a parent of a current 234-er.
“The learning experience is being affected,” he said. “In Lower Manhattan, you have housing going up at an exponential rate and schools are not being built at exponential rates,” Levine explained. “There doesn’t seem to be any planning. I think the responsibility for planning lies with the mayor, who controls the schools.”
But Mayor Bloomberg is pointing at someone else: the state.
The Campaign for Fiscal Equity, with the city’s support, sued New York State for deficient school funding that has left the Department of Education without critical capital. In light of a recent court decision, Marge Feinberg, spokesperson for the Department of Education, says “It looks like the state is going to give us the funds we need.”
Bending to political winds
However, 101 Warren Street’s developer, Edward J. Minskoff, originally bought the plot from the city with the intent of building offices. After Sept. 11, Bloomberg reportedly asked for a mixed-use compound instead. When families moved out of the neighborhood after the attacks, school overcrowding wasn’t a problem. Now, it’s a different story.
Julie Koster is head of admissions at Claremont Preparatory School, the first private nondenominational school south of Canal Street, which opened in September 2005 for grades K-8. “The owner of the school had the foresight and saw the potential with all the development,” Koster said.
The migration of binkies and Bratz dolls Downtown may attract parents to the less crowded private options. The Claremont Preparatory School is hoping to connect with them.
There are also other alternatives to develop public schools and ease overcrowding as new developments proliferate. One idea being floated involves public-private partnerships between developers and the city. Feinberg said that the city can build without public cost by leasing a school’s surplus air rights. Then, the private developer can build a condo tower with the caveat of improving the school.
“The developer is allowed to use development potential that was unrealized by the municipal government and the government can use an untapped asset to add seat capacity to the school system,” she wrote in an e-mail.
Downtown Brooklyn next?
Downtown Brooklyn is another area which has seen an increasing number of apartments following a 2004 rezoning allowing residential development, in addition to more dense commercial and mixed-use projects.
This month, Hershco of United Homes announced a new residential venture in Downtown Brooklyn on Gold Street, off Tillary Street. Two soaring residential towers — one 36 stories and another 40 stories, making it Brooklyn’s tallest new construction building — are scheduled to be finished in 2007. Close to 40 percent of the 500 total units will have two or three bedrooms.
The ubiquitous Brooklyn Clash-clad parents aside, this isn’t a Park Slope brownstone, nor is it Hershco’s first residential project in the neighborhood. The Toy Factory Lofts brought many families to the area and garnered United Homes about twice the sales price for condos than first expected.
The nearby P.S. 287 isn’t operating at capacity, but is considered a “high needs” school, raising the question of whether Hershco has yet built enough in the neighborhood to repeat history.