The City Council has paved the way for the demolition of a 108-year-old Fourth Avenue schoolhouse to make room for a new building with triple the capacity.
Last week’s 46-4 vote allows the School Construction Authority to tear down the historic PS 133 on the block between Baltic and Butler streets in Park Slope and replace it with a 960-seat elementary school — despite the concerns of neighbors that the new building will be too big.
The school-building agency claims it needs to raze the 300-seat Charles Snyder-designed structure to build a larger “state-of-the-art” facility — one so large, in fact, that it requires a zoning override — that could seat students from school District 13 (which includes Fort Greene, Clinton Hill and Bedford Stuyvesant) as well as about 660 students from fast-growing school District 15 (which includes Park Slope and Sunset Park).
In addition to the new facility’s size, neighbors also objected to separate entrances for the students from each district, the school’s encroachment on a three-decade-old community garden on Fourth Avenue, and the impact that a large institution would have on the environment.
In its approval of the city’s plans, the Council added stipulations requiring that the School Construction Authority host a town hall meeting before demolishing the existing building, and consult with the Department of Environmental Conservation to ensure that it will “protect the community from any toxins and pollutants.”
But those concessions did little to sweeten the deal for project opponents — who fear that elevated concentrations of lead and toxic soil vapors detected in the soil beneath the school in the city’s draft environmental impact study could put the neighborhood at risk.
“It’s devastating,” said project opponent and community gardener Julie Claire. “I feel like I’m in the ‘Twilight Zone’ when elected officials would knowingly build a school for small children on contaminated ground.”
Claire found an ally in Councilwoman Letitia James (D-Fort Greene), who was one of just four legislators to vote no.
“Why the rush? Why was there no planning with the community? Why two separate entrances? And why are we ignoring the environmental issues?” asked James. “This plan needs to be more thoroughly discussed with the community.”
But the Council vote means that the School Construction Authority can move forward with the three-year demolition and construction project, during which PS 133 students will be relocated to the former St. Thomas Aquinas School on Fourth Avenue.
