Robert Rhodes, the principal of the fledgling Millennium High School, addressed a crowd of incoming students and their parents last month, giving them a preview of the school’s new downtown home that was just three months away from opening, at least on paper.

He talked about new science labs and classrooms, a library and media center, and a café envisioned as a more grown-up take on the traditional school cafeteria. With the help of several preliminary architect’s sketches, he described an “open flexible layout” that would promote “a sense of community.”

		It will all be ensconced on the 11th through 13th floors of 75 Broad Street, where students will use a separate building entrance and will ride three dedicated elevators to and from school, Rhodes said during the orientation session at the Regent Wall Street hotel, three blocks away. “We’ll have almost a building within a building,” he said. The space will not be completed until the fall of 2004. But the school, which spent its first year in midtown, is supposed to move into one floor in September, with 250 students. While that leaves barely two months to do a lot of design and construction work, Rhodes expressed no doubts about the September opening. “Although it’s an aggressive plan, it’s also a realistic plan,” he said. The Lower Manhattan Development Corp. allocated up to $3 million so that work could get started, and last month Rhodes and representatives of the Department of Education and Community Board 1 were fleshing out designs with an architectural firm, HLW Architects. Interior construction was supposed to begin this month even as design work continued. But by late June, the Department of Education had still not signed a lease, and questions remained about whether the space will be ready in time. “We’ve had a little bit of difficulty getting the lease done, which has slowed us down somewhat,” Madelyn Wils, Community Board 1’s chairwoman, said
at a meeting of the board’s Youth and Education Committee on June 24. “I hope the City of New York is able to come with us as quickly as we’re trying to go down this road.” For Millennium’s incoming families, Rhodes focused on the anticipated benefits of the finished design. Among the ideas that the architects were developing, he said, was for a central internal stairway connecting the school’s three floors. In addition to helping create a unified space, the wide stairway, with carpeted seating areas, would provide a place for students to hang out and for the school to hold assemblies and performances. Rhodes also touted the school’s small size—it will grow to about 500 students—and its start-up status, saying that parents and students could play a role in its development. Margaret Manos, who attended the orientation with her daughter, Laura Manos-Hey, shared Rhodes’ enthusiasm. “It’s exciting to be part of something new,” Manos said afterward, though she added that it also made her “a little nervous.” As for the planned September opening, she said, “I still have my doubts.” Mark Guliani, whose son Max plans to attend Millennium and whose wife, Linda, works a few blocks from 75 Broad Street, was also not totally convinced. “I’ve been wondering whether it can be pulled off in time,” he said. “People say construction takes forever, especially when the Board of Ed and the city are involved. But the principal seems to feel that the school will be in, so I remain optimistic.”