It might be summer recess, but the Berkeley Carroll School will open its doors on July 29, when it hosts a community forum to discuss its plan to erect a new building at the site of its middle school and upper school.
The meeting, scheduled for Wednesday, July 29 at 7 p.m., will be convened at 181 Lincoln Place, which houses about 450 students, grades five through 12. The private school plans to build a new addition at the rear of the Lincoln Place property.
Jodie Corngold, the school’s communications director, said the new building will be one story tall, but denser than the existing one−story annex, which will be demolished.
The new building, she said, will allow a larger and more efficient dining room, additional classrooms, teacher offices and a larger space for student assembly and study. A rooftop playground is also planned.
The work does not require a variance, and is allowable under the current zoning for the site. Work could begin at the end of the 2009−2010 school year, she added. The cost has not yet been released, Corngold said. “Our board is confident that we are on firm financial footing on this,” she said.
The new building does not represent a de facto expansion of the student body. “That’s not part of the plan,” she said.
The purpose of the meeting “is to open up a dialogue with our neighbors that abut the school,” Corngold said. “They will hear and see the construction, and we want to be good neighbors and include them in the process from the very beginning.”
