March 8, 2008
In August, 2007, the City of Atlanta granted a Special Use Permit (SUP) to The Children’s School that will allow the school, over a number of years, to build out its new master site plan. The process of obtaining the new SUP required months of dedicated work by school representatives, neighborhood activists, community groups, and local politicians working to find common ground between the goals of allowing the school to create the campus it needs to best support its education program and preserving the residential character of our wonderful Midtown neighborhood. At the conclusion of the process, all parties had clear gains: the school emerged with a more exciting and creative master plan than the one with which it entered the process and the neighborhood received important assurances relating to the impact the school will have on it in the future. It was a remarkable, sometimes difficult, and ultimately rewarding process that forged enhanced relationships between the school and its neighbors, as noted by a representative of the Midtown Neighbors Association in this letter.
Achieving the new SUP was the beginning of a new chapter of long-term planning and building for The Children’s School that will have many phases. The first phase involves the properties located at 325 and 321 Tenth Street, which were purchased with the intention of eventually using them for educational purposes. The new SUP requires that we sell the property at 321 Tenth Street, and allows us to convert the property at 325 Tenth Street to school use. The SUP contemplates that the improvements at 325 Tenth Street will take place in two stages. The first stage , which has been completed, consisted of removing the structure that was on the site and creating a playground. The second stage—the construction of a new classroom building on the site—will occur later, at a date to be determined based on a long-term facilities planning process that we have recently begun. The building that will eventually be constructed at 325 Tenth Street will be in keeping with the character of our Midtown neighborhood. To that end, The Children’s School entered into an agreement with the Midtown Neighbor’s Association to allow the MNA’s historic preservation committee to review and comment on the proposed façade of the new building.
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