APS drops Paces Apartments Site for Buckhead High School Location

The controversial Paces Apartments site has been dropped from consideration as the location for a new high school in Buckhead.

"The Atlanta Public Schools admnistration has notified the owner of the Paces Apartments that they are no longer considering this as a potential site for a new high school," Nancy Meister, District 4 representative on the Board of Education, said Saturday morning in an e-mail. "APS has determined that the Paces site is not suitable for a public school campus." Meister represents Buckhead.

District 7 city councilman Howard Shook said Saturday, "It was indicated to me some months ago that that site (Paces Apartments) was no longer APS' preferred site, and they were intensifying the effort to secure another location."

With the removal of the Paces Apartments site at East Andrews Drive near Roswell Road, attention shifted to the 56-acre IBM Corp. site at 4111 Northside Parkway, north of Mount Paran Road.

"From a development and construction timeline schedule and a constructibility standpoint, the IBM site is a much better direction. As far as a site goes, it's lot more conducive to a  school of that nature," said Reide Onley, co-president of the Sutton Middle School PTA.

As a commercial builder, Onley said the IBM site would be easier to develop and build infrastructure from an engineering standpoint. The Paces Ferry site brought protests from nearby neighborhoods worried about the increase of traffic  in the congested area.

The construction of a new Buckhead High School, announced by Atlanta School Superintendent Beverly Hall in January, would relieve severe overcrowding at Sutton.  A new middle school would be placed at the current location of North Atlanta High School on Northside Drive.

"If they're truly focusing on the IBM site, that would be a step in the right direction and showing some form of progress in APS trying to get an answer in place  for overcrowding and provide a new high school as quickly as they can," Onley said.

The APS had been seeking a centrally located site for the new high school serving the cluster of 7,000 students from Buckhead's six elementary schools and currently one middle school. "As far as being smack dab in the middle of the cluster, it's not the most geographically desirable site," Onley said about the IBM location. But its suitability for development makes it preferable, he said.

Onley said the APS makes its final selection quickly. "It was supposed to be announced by the end of the year, which we're rapidly approaching."

Meister in her e-mail said "The administration will continue to focus its due diligence on various other sites with the intent of resolving site selection as quickly as possible in order to address the needs of our students in the North Atlanta cluster. The system remains committed to a new high school in the cluster."

Paces Apartments property owner John Grant III hired Atlanta attorney Carl Westmoreland last summer to help prevent the school board from taking his property.

Westmoreland has specialized in land use and zoning law in metro Atlanta for about 30 years. He joined a team of Grant's lawyers who specialize in condemnation law. Westmoreland practices in the real estate division of Seyfarth Shaw, in Midtown.

Westmoreland said he was surprised by the school district's abrupt decision to abandon Grant's property.

"It came out of the blue and is frankly something I wish we had received a couple of months ago," Westmoreland said.

"Having said that, I think they made the right decision," Westmoreland said. "You've heard a lot of valid objections as this has played out – traffic, harm to the existing retail businesses and the planned redevelopment of the West Village.

"That is just not a good site for a school," Westmoreland said.

Another key issue is whether two separate middle schools will be established, one at the current Sutton site and the other at North Atlanta, or whether one site would be a school for sixth graders only and the other for seventh and eighth graders. 

Atlanta is prepared to pay more than $1.6 million an acre for a school site.

School spokesman Keith Bromery said the district expects  to spend about $50 million for a site of at least 30 acres. Construction is expected to cost an additional $50 million, he said.

The minimum size of a high school under Georgia Department of Education regulations is 20 acres, plus 1 acre for each 100 students who are enrolled full time, according to DOE spokesman Matt Cardoza. Under that formula, the school site must be at least 36 acres to accommodate the 1,600 students to attend the school.

The site has to be that large to accommodate amenities including two gymnasiums, an auditorium, football field and baseball field, Bromery said.

The school will be built to house up to 1,600 students, Bromery said.

Construction is to be complete by August 2013.