Hundreds of new homes are being built in Orange and there is a growing concern that the public schools are running out of space, even with last year’s reopening of Cleveland Street Elementary and the recent expansion of Orange High School.
As a way to remedy this, the city government was trying to broker a deal with a developer to construct classrooms on the ground floor of a new multi-story apartment building proposed at 38-60 Berwyn Street.
However the Board of Education turned down this offer — and the reasons why has become a subject of disagreement.
The developer, B & O Urban Renewal Entity, is proposing to build a 173-unit building at he corner of Berwyn Street and Oakwood Avenue.
Elnardo Webster, the developer’s lawyer, said the deal to put 7,000 square feet of classrooms for pre-school and early elementary school students on the ground floor of the building was in exchange for a tax abatement.
But the deal fell through. Instead, the first floor will have resident amenities, a leasing office, eight more apartments, and a 1,000-square-foot retail space.
“The city and the developer put extensive time, plans, and effort into creating academic space, classroom space, for the board of education and invited the board of education into those plans,” said Mayor Dwayne Warren. “At the end of that entire effort the board decided that they did not need the school space that was going to be provided.
But Tyrone Tarver, Orange Board of Education member, claims that Warren “misrepresented” his position. The school district does need classrooms — but the facilities offered were inadequate because there was insufficient open space for children to play during recess and the parking garage would have only been made available to teachers and administrators for part of the day.
Tarver said the issue of crowded classrooms is becoming dire. The school district began renting space at Our Lady of the Valley to accommodate the students at Cleveland Street School while it was being renovated.
But the school district has become so crowded that the city is still renting out that space even after Cleveland Street School opened last year. “It’s not a good situation for the school district to continue renting out the space,” Tarver said.
There was longstanding agreement between the municipal government and the Orange Board of Education that when the former Tremont Avenue School — which had become a police substation — became vacant, the city was supposed to sell that land to the board to build a new school.
However, Warren reneged on that promise and instead sold the land to a developer, who is building a six-story apartment building there, Tarver said.
Last year, the Planning Board approved plans for more than 1,000 new apartments to be built at the site of the Orange Memorial Hospital. Tarver is concerned how the school district will accommodate the children residing in those new homes, as well as the new apartment buildings at 90 Main Street and 424 Main Street, where construction is underway.
“We’re potentially talking about 1,000 or more students coming into the school district and we don’t have any place to put them,” Tarver said.
