Design of Planned CT Autism School Questioned (Not by the Students)
December 20, 2008 by Kristina Chew, PhD
Filed under Education, Money
Plans to construct a new 27,000 school for autistic children in Milford, Connecticut, have been put on hold after Planning and Zoning Board members questioned the design and material of the proposed school, today’s New Haven Register reports:
PZB Chairwoman Jean Cervin said the board specifically did not like the “rectangular box” appearance of the proposed school, and the metal roof. She also said the playscape is proposed for the front yard, and some members felt it was too close to the road, and should be placed at the rear of the site.
Cervin said PZB members do not object to the proposed 30,000-square-foot school, which includes a gymnasium.
“They do a very necessary piece of education for autistic children,” Cervin said.
Suzanne Letso, co-founder and chief executive officer of the Connecticut Center for Child Development, is concerned about the proposed changes increasing the price of building the school. Currently, the school has 45 students in one building and rents additional space for seven students from a church. Fundraising for the new school has been going on for seven years.
Notably, what’s missing from the discussion is what sort of design and classroom environment would be best for autistic students, but since when has that ever been the priority…….
Jeff Stimpson
Jill Cornfield
Suzanne, besides being the Director, is also the parent of an autistic child. I would be surprised if she was not keeping the overall environment and educational aspects in mind. Perhaps it is just the case that this story chose not to focus on that as the topic of the article. I can understand some impatience to get the school into a more permanent setting.
I could see a problem with the playscape in front… being too close to the road is questionable if there’s a fence around it, but if I took my son to school and the playground was right out the front door, he’d go running for that, instead of the doors…. He already runs for the gym or the cafeteria on the way to class so if I miss the bus, I call ahead so his teachers
can meet me at the bus entrance
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…
Weird, wonder why the CCCD page lists it as being a school “for children with autism 3 - 21 years of age”. Last I checked 21 was not a child…
Also, trivially, I actually grew up in Milford, CT before moving to CA in 1996.
I’m not thinking so much about Letso and the design, as the the Planning and Zoning Boar’s rationale for rejecting the plan. Are the concerns aesthetic? What if the school can’t raise the necessary funds, especially with the current economic situation…….
@AnneC, under IDEA, people with disabilities can have school district services until the age of 21.
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.
I am all for people having services until whatever age they need them, including indefinitely. I was responding to the fact that they were referring to the 3-21 age range as “children”. That does not seem accurate, regardless of the fact that everyone is someone’s child from a lineage standpoint.
Financing commercial construction projects is one of the main things I do. The article stated that the property was purchased 7 years ago at a cost of $800,000 for 4.59 acres in a residential zone. The building is to be 30,000 sq. ft. at a cost of $1.2MM (assuming the fundraising goals represent the cost of the building).
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.
You know- maybe I went to school in poor rural areas where people don’t care about these things… but my schools were made of concrete cinder blocks with cheap metal roofs. And they were box shaped. It’s a school- not an architectural marvel! Maybe if the state would actually help subsidize the project they could build something nicer.
“but my schools were made of concrete cinder blocks with cheap metal roofs.”
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.
Location, building, facilities—these have been issues for a couple of private autism schools here in NJ. The school my son used to attend was located in a few rooms of a large religious school and while “needing the space” was not cited as a reason for closing the school, that did seem a potential reason. Other schools have gotten started with students, teachers, directors, but still struggled to find space and space that would meet state requirements.
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.