New Schools Delayed, New Residents Not

By Etta Sanders
POSTED SEPT. 1, 2006

In the race between more apartments and more classrooms in Lower Manhattan, the classrooms are losing.

Opening of both the new kindergarten-through-8th-grade school on Beekman Street and the P.S. 234 annex will be delayed at least a year, according to the Department of Education (DOE). The annex, which will have six to eight classrooms and will be located in a building on the west side of the school, is scheduled to open in the fall of 2008. The 600-seat Beekman Street school is now due to open September 2009.

“The schedule is different from originally anticipated because of funding delays,” DOE spokeswoman Marge Feinberg said in an e-mail.

The delays are the result of a budget maneuver in the spring by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who withheld promised appropriations for these and other city schools in order to get state legislators to release state funds owed to the city for school construction.

While the school openings have been delayed, occupancy of thousands of new residences throughout Tribeca and the Financial District is forging ahead.
Families will be moving into three of the largest Tribeca developments, at 200 Chambers St., 101 Warren St., and 88 Leonard St.—almost 1,000 apartments— before any new classrooms are ready.

With P.S. 234 already over capacity, that means the school’s population will likely swell in 2007. “I expect class size to go up dramatically,” said Kevin Doherty, P.S. 234’s PTA president.

The P.S. 234 annex will be in a new residential tower at 200 Chambers St., now nearly complete. Eighty percent of the 258 condos have already been sold, according to Cory Walter, the building’s sales director. The first residents will move into the lower floors in December. And the location is definitely attracting families, Walter said.

“Tribeca is very well known for being a family-oriented area. There’s a reason we put in a four-foot-deep swimming pool and a children’s playroom,” Walter said. “Certainly a large attraction is the strong reputation of P.S. 234.”

Residents are expected to begin moving into a nearly 400-unit complex at 101 Warren Street (formerly Site 5B), across the street from P.S. 234, by late next year.

An agreement between Deputy Mayor Daniel Doctoroff and Councilman Alan Gerson stated that the city would use “reasonable efforts to complete the building of the [Beekman Street] school by the date the residential units on site 5B are occupied.”

Residents are expected to begin moving into those buildings by late next year. The school is scheduled to open in the fall of 2009.