A new elementary school is coming to the Financial District. On Thursday, the School Construction Authority (the City agency that manages the design, construction and renovation of educational facilities) announced an agreement with Trinity Place Holdings, the company that owns the site of the now-defunct Syms discount clothing store, to build a new elementary school with 476 seats. The announcement says that design for the school is expected to be completed by this summer, with an entrance opening onto Trinity Place, south of Rector Street.
Dates for the start of construction or the opening of the school have not yet been announced. Both milestones are likely to be contingent on the larger development project of which the school will be one component. Preliminary plans for the site (which is bounded by Edgar Street on the south, Greenwich Street on the west, Rector Street on the north, and Trinity Place on east) call for a mixed-use tower of at least 80 stories and an overall height of more than 1,000 feet. (For perspective, this would make the building taller than Four World Trade Center and only about 300 feet shorter than the roof of One World Trade Center.)
The building that currently occupies most of this site is the former Syms store, which closed in 2011, and contains approximately 70,000 square feet. Without any variances, the site is now zoned for up to 300,000 square feet of developable space. But the owners have been acquiring adjacent sites and buying air rights from nearby parcels for several years. The most recent piece of this development puzzle that may have fallen into place might be gleaned from unconfirmed reports that the owner’s of George’s Diner (at Greenwich and Rector Streets) have sold their building. The resulting assemblage could theoretically allow the owners of the site to erect a structure containing more than one million square feet of interior space.
The Syms family, which operated the discount clothing store at 42 Trinity Place for decades, put the retailer into bankruptcy five years ago, in the wake of allegations by stockholders that they were attempting to conceal plans to redevelop the block that the store occupied. The site languished for several years while the children of the company’s late founder, Sy Syms, sued each other over his estate. But when the litigation and bankruptcy were resolved, the company reemerged as Trinity Place Holdings, a real estate investment firm not engaged in the retail business. Shares in this company began trading on the New York Stock Exchange a few weeks ago.
Initial plans for the Syms site include two floors of retail space at ground level, with three stories of school space above. These elements will be topped by a hotel, which will take up an additional 30 floors. Above this hotel will be perched a residential condominium of at least 40 more stories. It is also possible that agreement to include a new public school within the building may win the developers additional zoning concessions, which could enable a still-taller and larger building.
Word that a new school will be coming the Lower Manhattan was greeted with enthusiasm by elected officials and community leaders, all of whom have waged a decade-long campaign for new educational facilities Downtown. “Today is a big step in the community’s long push for a simple idea — school capacity should grow as a neighborhood grows, not after a crisis has hit,” said State Senator Daniel Squadron. “The Trinity Place school will expand upon the great communities that P.S./I.S. 276 in Battery Park City, the Spruce Street and Peck Slip schools, as well as P.S. 234 and P.S. 89, have built.”
“This is a victory for parents and children in Lower Manhattan, which has quickly become one of the most attractive places for New Yorkers to live, work and raise their families,” said Council Member Margaret Chin.
“It’s great to see the School Construction Authority making good on its commitment to add elementary school seats in Lower Manhattan, one of our fastest-growing neighborhoods,” said Manhattan Borough President Gale A. Brewer.
“I am thrilled that there is a commitment to build a new school serving Lower Manhattan,” said Congressman Jerry Nadler. “This announcement is one more step towards improving our children’s educational experience.”
Catherine McVay Hughes, chair of Community Board 1 (CB1), said, “Downtown families have waited a long time for school seats to start catching up with our fast-growing neighborhood, especially in the Financial District. This investment by the School Construction Authority has the potential to transform this part of the Financial District into the kind of bustling community hub that the Peck Slip School has quickly become.”
Paul Hovitz, co-chair of CB1’s Youth and Education Committee, said, “this is wonderful. Part of the credit goes to our elected officials picking up the gauntlet.” He noted that the Syms site, “might have been better suited to a middle school, because it is relatively isolated from residential buildings,” but added, “this is also a very good location for an elementary school, and it’s great news, because we clearly need more seats in the Financial District.” He observed, hopefully, “this may take some of the pressure off of P.S. 276,” which has suffered acute overcrowding in recent years, as children from the Financial District have applied for seats there.
Anticipating upcoming challenges, Mr. Hovitz added, “now, we have to be sure that space in Tweed Court House is available to incubate the new school before it opens.” This was a reference to the Department of Education headquarters on Chambers Street, which contains classroom space that hosted children enrolled in multiple local schools built in the last decade (P.S./I.S. 276, Spruce Street, and Peck Slip) before construction was finished on their permanent facilities.
Eric Greenleaf, who has helped for years to compile statistical evidence demonstrating that Lower Manhattan was being systematically shortchanged of school seats, said, “this is very welcome news, but we haven’t seen the end of the need for additional schools Downtown. It would be wonderful if there were some way this could be expanded beyond the 476 seats currently planned, because building additional seats into an existing plan is much less expensive than siting and starting an entirely separate school.” He noted that there is ample precedent for this idea: Plans for the Peck Slip School were revised twice before it opened, swelling its capacity from approximately 400 students to more than 700.
And the need for such capacity is unlikely to diminish anytime soon. For context, it is necessary only to look outside what will be the front door of the new school announced on Thursday. Above it, if the tower planned for the Syms site contains an average of just three apartments per floor, this building will have at least 120 units. A few steps away, there is a 64-story residential tower rising at 50 West Street (slated to open in a few months), which will contain 191 apartments. Elsewhere in the Financial District, the conversion of the former office tower at 70 Pine Street will house more than 640 residential units. Those three buildings alone will add more than 950 households to the Financial District. If only one half of those dwellings become home to a school-age child, the buildings at the Syms site, 50 West Street, and 70 Pine Street, will (all by themselves) use up all the capacity created by the new school. And those three buildings are merely a fraction of the residential development now planned for Lower Manhattan.