Schools enliven neotraditional town centers

The Seaside Neighborhood School opened in 1997. In terms of public schools, nothing like it has been built in decades. The building resembles a 100-year-old New England meeting house, albeit one equipped with modern, handicapped accessible lavatories, large, flexible space classrooms and high-speed internet access. It comfortably accommodates 75 students (grades six through eight) in a building that is 3,300 square feet, the size of many suburban single homes. The construction cost was $340,000, about the price of a small school during the Eisenhower administration. By modern suburban standards thefacility is tiny — inadequate, perhaps — yet it has been very popular, attracting the maximum students allowed under its charter during its first two years. One major advantage is that it has a teacher-pupil ratio of 12 to one, which makes it the envy of other public schools. The school’s design may be unique to a place like Seaside, the famous traditional neighborhood development (TND) on the Florida Panhandle. “The school is definitely the child of the design of the town, because the town is user-friendly and a learning laboratory,” says principal Rosemary Williams. “I couldn’t run a school like this where I’m from in Pennsylvania because you need a bus to get everywhere.” Of all schools in new urbanist projects — and there are only a handful to date, although more are planned — the Seaside school comes closest to the ideal of a small-scale, neighborhood institution. It received a charter in 1996, one of the first five charter schools in Florida. The clapboard, two-story structure built close to the street near the center of town reinforces the school’s important place in the community. Many tourists, on foot, feel comfortable walking in the front door, as if the school were a chapel in Florence; that has been a problem. Otherwise, the town offers many educational advantages, says Williams. The school is located on a major public space called the Lyceum, which students use for physical education and other purposes, and where special events are held. The whole town is used as a classroom, with community members sometimes serving as volunteer faculty. Developer Robert Davis’ garden is the site of an ongoing multidisciplinary project for the students, who draw plans, plant, tend, harvest and keep a journal. The M & M Personal Training Center, a local business, is where students go to learn about fitness equipment and how the body functions. The school’s two classrooms are large enough for many performances, but when a bigger space is needed, the Seaside meeting hall is used. Students get classes in architecture and town planning, and the beaches are used for science projects on occasion. Because classes are so small, teachers and students can be spontaneous when the weather allows — sometimes holding classes in beach pavilions or other public spaces. Because Seaside is so compact and pedestrian-friendly — virtually everything is within a five-minute walk of the school — the use of the whole town presents no problems, Williams says. “Even though only one student lives in Seaside, most of them know it well,” she says. “Many of their parents work here, and they come here often.” When walking from one location to another, students always are escorted by an adult. Students get a “tremendous benefit” in their close contact with community members, who serve as role models and know the students well. “Everyone knows who belongs in the school and whose parents they belong to,” Williams says. “That’s a supportive atmosphere in which to operate a school.” Williams, who worked closely with architect Richard Gibbs on the design, is very pleased with the building, with one exception. “I told Richard to make the classrooms as big as possible and provide closet space and make the bathrooms handicapped accessible, and if he had any space left over to create an office. So he put my office under the stairway. I love it, but it is very small.” Florida is on the low end of the scale in terms of per-pupil charter school finance — and so the Seaside school receives only $3,500/student, enough to pay instructional expenses. The rest of the school budget is paid through fund raisers. The site was donated by developer Davis. Construction expenses were paid through location fees from the Hollywood movie The Truman Show, donated by Davis and the Seaside homeowners associations. Kentlands, Gaithersburg, Maryland The Rachel Carson Elementary School, opening its doors in 1990, was the first school to be built in a new urbanist development, and the first civic building in Kentlands, a pioneering 352-acre TND in Gaithersburg, Maryland. Developer at the time Joe Alfandre offered the school site to the Montgomery County school district on the stipulation that he be permitted pick the building design. School officials, who were not willing to cede that much control to a developer, gave Alfandre a choice of three possible designs, none of which were satisfactory from a new urbanist standpoint. So Alfandre paid Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company, the town planners and architects, to alter one of the designs to include a classical entrance facing an important traffic circle. The semicircular bus dropoff mirrors the arc of the roundabout, which gives Rachel Carson the appearance of fronting directly on a street. Although the school is large, serving 800 students, and fairly conventionally designed, it is an integral part of the town in a physical sense. That connection is supported by Kentlands’ good street layout, which allows children in the development to walk to school. With the help of a relatively minor architectural alteration, Rachel Carson functions as a neighborhood school and important civic landmark, and it is the site for community activities. Celebration, Orlando, Florida The Celebration School is a Kindergarten through 12th grade facility, comprising many buildings on a 36-acre “campus,” serving 950 students in the Osceola County (Florida) School District. The school opened in 1996 in a temporary location and moved to the completed buildings in 1997 in the new town of Celebration, which, along with Seaside, is probably the best-know TND. Developer Disney hired William Rawn Associates to design the 145,000 square foot school, which cost an estimated $19.4 million to build and $700,000 to design. Disney contributed $11 million in land, design services and general financial support. Although the site seems large for a neighborhood school, the scale is compensated by placement of buildings along the street, architecture that articulates civic importance, and the location near downtown. The Celebration School, as a result, functions in many ways as a neighborhood school for students who live in or near downtown — all of whom can walk or bicycle to and from the facility. Most students presently are bussed in from throughout Osceola County because Celebration only has about 1,700 current residents (at buildout it will have 20,000). The Celebration School is a major draw for prospective buyers into the community, but, ironically, also has been the center of controversy. The physical design of the school and its location are widely popular, but a minority of residents reportedly have reacted very negatively to innovative curriculum and teaching techniques implemented at the school. Such controversies are commonplace in communities and have little to do with the New Urbanism, except to serve as a warning that curriculum can be a touchy subject. Although the Celebration School is controlled by the local school board, Disney was seen as having a strong hand in establishing the innovative aspects of the school, which was set up as something of a laboratory. Disney funded a “Teachers’ Academy,” now called the Teacher Professional Development Services, located in a building on the campus. Four universities — Johns Hopkins, Auburn, Stetson and Central Florida — operate internship and graduate-level programs in conjunction with the school. Harbor Town, Memphis, Tennessee With small lots near downtown Memphis, the developer of Harbor Town did not expect many families with school-aged children to purchase homes. The target markets were single professionals and empty-nesters. When the first two buyers had preschool children,developer Island Properties quickly realized that something had to be done. They couldn’t look to the Memphis School District, because a new downtown school would take a decade to be planned and built. So Island Properties partnered with Maria Cole, an educator who wanted to open a private Montessori School downtown. The developer built the school, and leased it to Cole, in what has become a successful business venture for both parties. “For the first couple of years we subsidized it to get it going,” says Tony Bologna, an architect who is the project manager for Harbor Town. “But since we added the first addition, we have been getting a good market rate, geared to a 12 percent return.” At first, the school accepted students up to grade four. After the first addition, the grades went up to six, and the second addition brought the school to grade eight. It is filled to capacity, with 160 students, about a third of whom live in Harbor Town. The first three phases, totaling 9,500 square feet, cost $378,000 to build, according to architect David Schuermann. The $40/square foot costs reflect the fairly basic materials and construction. Interior walls in the school were kept to a minimum, which allows flexibility in teaching and kept construction costs low, he says. Two more expansions are planned. From the developer’s point of view, the school has been successful because it enlivens the downtown in addition to serving a need of residents, says Bologna. Fairview Village, Fairview, Washington The Woodland Elementary, in the Reynolds School District, is located adjacent to Fairview Village, an 88-acre TND. Although Woodland is conventionally planned and designed, it is connected by a pedestrian bridge to Fairview Village, within walking distance of all homes. It opened its doors in 1997. The construction of the pedestrian bridge was organized by the developer, Holt & Haugh, with the help of local sponsors. The labor was volunteer and included local contractors and public officials. The bridge shows how a developer of a TND can connect a conventional school to the project, providing residents with the benefits of a neighborhood school and the associated amenities. Holt & Haugh was able to take advantage of Fairview Village’s pedestrian scale to make the connection. Southern Village Bryan Properties, developer of Southern Village in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, donated six acres to the local school district to build an elementary school. The state requires that new elementary schools be built on a minimum of 12 acres, so the town added an adjacent six acres, which had been slated for ball fields. The district was willing to look at more traditional architecture for the 91,000 square foot, $12 million building, now under construction. “It really helped that the superintendent is progressive,” says Jim Earnhardt, Southern Village project manager. Donating the property — valued at $600,000 — made sense because of the benefits of having a public school in the town center, says Earnhardt. “It has already helped us sell more houses,” he says. “There is also a positive public relations aspect. We will probably never recover all of the money, but the residents certainly will in terms of their increased property values.”