STAPLETON — The city is planning to pull down a warehouse and build a new 700 seat school serving Staten Island.
Plans are also in place to lease a shuttered Catholic school to provide another 200 places.
The Schools Construction Authority held its first public meeting last Thursday to discuss plans for building the new school at 357 Targee St. It's expected to open in 2021.
"Finally the city, the City Council and the Schools Construction Authority have heard our calls," said Nicholas Siclari, president of Community Board 1, at the meeting.
"Kids are overcrowded in every one of the schools in this area, in the North Shore, and now they have an opportunity to finally build a school for Stapleton."
The SCA also announced at the meeting that the city leased the former Immaculate Conception school at 104 Gordon St.
Plans at the Targee Street site call for the city to demolish the former Victory Van Lines warehouse to replace it with a "state-of-the-art" building to alleviate overcrowding at schools in the neighborhood.
The project is open to public comment until Dec. 26, then the SCA will bring the project for approval to the City Council. The SCA expects construction could break ground sometime in 2018.
Officials at the meeting could not say what grades it would serve and said the Department of Education would make that decision a few months before it opens.
While residents were glad the city was adding more school seats, many asked for it to be a high school or use parts of it as a site for the all-boys Eagle Academy that's running out of space in I.S. 49.
Fred Malley, of the SCA, said the city was considering using the Immaculate Conception site — which closed in 2013 — for the Eagle Academy and the SCA would assess the school after repairs are made to the exterior.
