Thanks for all that info, CS…..

Charlie’s middle school is not exactly “aesthetically pleasing.” It’s a public school in a residential neighborhood, set back from the road (and there’s a huge parking lot in front of it, which I always go in via the wrong entrance—certain lanes only for buses and all kinds of “NO [this]” signs.

I’m not saying what the board did was acceptable for the building, just that there are zoning restrictions that have to be managed. At $800,000/4.59 acres = $174,291 per acre. That looks like residential land costs to me, not commercial and certainly not rural.

I did a Google Satellite search (Wolf Harbor Rd., Milford, Ct.) of the road after I wrote the above and that road for the most part is populated by single family homes. My guess is that the planning and zoning board probably made an exception to the zoning from R-1 (residential single family) to allow a school there pending approval of the plans and specs. Unfortunately, Suzanne Letso was poorly served by the design firm who should know what could and could not be put on that site. Either way, the $800,000 land portion of the cost is ridiculous. The land should have been purchased in a mixed use zone with a cost of at least half of an R-1 to even a quarter of the cost and then there would be more money for the school. I think Ms. Suzanne Letso has either been poorly advised or made a very poor decision on the placement of the school. I hope they are able to work something out. I would suggest she do a 1031 exchange of the current land for a spot that is more appropriate for the school and maybe she could get a building at the same time for the 1031 exchange.

I can see why the zoning board has problems. $1.2MM for a 30,000 sq. foot commercial building isn’t much so I wonder if the materials the board objects to are solid concrete blocks with a cheap metal roof (the only materials I can think of that . The “soft costs” of such a building would run about $150,000. The land development would be another $200,000 or so. That means the building itself would be under $1 million. A million for a building that size is just nothing. There is more to this story I think from the board’s perspective than is in that news report.

Typically, when someone buys land and wants to construct a commercial building, they do both in tandem so they don’t run into any problems when constructing the building. That doesn’t appear to be the case here and she ran into problems when she went for approval. Sad situation.

The newspaper story is too sketchy. A rectangular building can be place-appropriate (isn’t New England the home of the saltbox house?) and metal roofs are not necessarily ugly.

The only PZB that seems appropriate to me is the placement of the play yard. They may have a point.

Also, trivially, I actually grew up in Milford, CT before moving to CA in 1996.

However, I can see how a box shape can be economical. They could feasibly have all of the classrooms have access to the sensory room or gymnasium…