Beekman Street School Delayed

By Etta Sanders
JULY 3, 2006

The much-anticipated new k-8th-grade school that is to be located at the base of a 75-story tower on Beekman Street will not open until September 2009, a year later than originally announced. The delay could add to the strain on the increasingly crowded P.S. 234, as families move into residential buildings around the school.

“Any delay would be a shame,” said Councilman Alan Gerson. “We’re going to continue to push for an expedited construction schedule. We need the school immediately.”

At a June 27 meeting with Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Community Board 1 representatives, the Beekman Street building’s developer, Forest City Ratner, said the project was delayed by uncertainty over funding for the school, according to community representatives who were present. Mayor Bloomberg had said no new schools would be built in the city unless the state provided funding. Construction money went back into the city budget only after the state agreed to give $11.2 billion for schools citywide.

“I am disappointed that the schoolchildren and parents in my community will have to wait another year to get the school they had been promised because of the mayor’s refusal to live up to his administration’s commitment to the project,” Silver said in a statement.

The new building, designed by Frank Gehry, will go up in what is now a parking lot next to New York Downtown Hospital, and will be the tallest skyscraper Downtown other than the planned Freedom Tower. Construction is slated to begin in September and will take between three and four years. Work on the foundation alone, including months of pile driving, is expected to take nearly a year.

Forest City Ratner did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

“We’re very concerned. We believe our quality of life is going to be totally damaged during this construction phase,” said John Fratta, president of the board of Southbridge Towers, an apartment complex near the site.

Congestion from construction vehicles and equipment on the narrow streets around the site may be exacerbated by the city’s plan to do an 18-month-long reconstruction of Beekman Street. Those streets are also heavily used by emergency vehicles from the hospital and from the firehouse on Beekman Street
CB1 district manager Paul Goldstein said his office would try to get the city to delay the street work. “The whole thing is going to be a mess,” he said.

The community board plans to hold a public meeting about the construction with Forest City Ratner in mid-September at Pace University.