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City Council Votes to Acquire Land for New 700-Seat Stapleton School

By Nicholas Rizzi | May 25, 2017 2:09pm
 The city plans to demolish the former warehouse at 357 Targee St. and build a new primary school in its place.
The city plans to demolish the former warehouse at 357 Targee St. and build a new primary school in its place.
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DNAinfo/Nicholas Rizzi

STAPLETON — A new 700-seat school planned to help ease overcrowding in the North Shore moved one step ahead after the City Council on Wednesday approved its land acquisition.

The City Council unanimously voted to approve the land use application to buy the land of the former warehouse at 357 Targee St. to build the new school, which is expected to open in 2021.

"Overcrowding not only puts a strain on teachers, but it makes it more difficult for students to concentrate on their lessons, limits innovation in the classroom and ultimately leads to lower test scores," Councilwoman Debi Rose said before the vote, according to a transcript provided by her office.

"Today, at our stated meeting, we will take a significant step forward toward alleviating overcrowding and ensuring quality educational facilities for children on the North Shore of Staten Island by authorizing the purchase of land at 357 Targee St."

The plans call to pull down the former Victory Van Lanes warehouse to construct a new, "state-of-the-art" building to alleviate overcrowding at schools in the neighborhood.

Last year, a nonprofit planned to buy the building — which has been mostly unused for years and on sale since at least 2014 — for $3.2 million to turn it into a 176-unit apartment building with 50 homes set aside for people with mental illness, the Staten Island Advance reported.

The project was met with fierce pushback from residents who said the area was already over-saturated with social services.

The nonprofit eventually dropped plans because it didn't want to build something the community was against, Bobby Digi, who was hired as a consultant on the project, previously said.

"They did not want to have to bump heads with the community on that project, I wasn't going to be part of that either," Digi, founder of Island Voice and president of the North Shore Business Alliance, previously told DNAinfo New York.

"They felt that whatever project they do, they want to have harmony with the community."

Groups opposed to that project previously said they were "thrilled" the city decided to turn it into a school.

The Schools Construction Authority held its first public meetings on the plan in November and said they expected to start construction sometime in 2018 after getting approvals from the City Council.

Officials did not previously say what grades it would serve but that the Department of Education would make that decision closer to its opening date.

Residents at the meeting asked the new space be a high school or use part of it as a site for the all-boys Eagle Academy that's running out of I.S. 49.