Anonymous
06/15/2018 15:19
Subject: APS - Eminent Domain for Golf Courses?
Anonymous wrote:
What are you talking about? There isn't enough open space on that site for another building, the most they could do is an addition to the existing school and they don't need an easement for that. Further, it couldn't just be an easement because there's no open space at the county club over there to use for access. If you force them to demolish part of their golf course to provide access to the Hoffman-Boston site, that would be a taking.
There is a ton of land there. They have 6 developmental soccer teams practicing at the same time, paired up into three groups and each group has plenty of space and is nowhere near running into the other. On top of that, there is open field space with absolutely nothing happening on it. This is all behind and to the right of the building, and does not include the tennis courts and basketball courts and playground space in back next to the building. Talk of an easement for additional emergency access has come up before; so this isn't a new and improbable idea from someone unfamiliar with the site.
Check out the site map here: https://www.apsva.us/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Facilities-Optimization-Study.pdf
There's a lot of land and it's fine for soccer fields, but it's not the kind of compact space you'd need to put a separate school building.
I don't know what you mean by "compact space" to build a building. Why would you want compact space? Isn't everyone clamoring that we don't have big open spaces for schools? Regardless, the building that is there now was originally a secondary school building and therefore built for bigger kids, not elementary-sized kids. Add onto or build a new building on the nice flat open non-compact space. Either way, there's plenty of room for playgrounds or fields or baseball diamond, or even trailers.
I meant to also note that, regardless, it has ample room to host a lot more students than are currently there.
Doing an addition onto Hoffman Boston to add another 150 or so elementary seats does almost nothing to address the capacity problems facing APS right now. Creating a new school's worth of elementary seats by adding 100 seats here and 150 there will end up cost us twice as much as just building a new elementary school.
As to compact space, I'm talking about the ability to actual site a building on the space that has everything it would need without it being some ridiculous snake-like structure. Feel free to print out the Hoffman-Boston site map and sketch out for yourself on the parcel's green space where you'd put another school buidling that had all of the necessary features. Keep in mind that the whole of the Hoffman-Boston site is 8.8 acres, smaller than the Yorktown site at 12.3 acres (which holds only the building, parking, and a tennis court, the rest of the fields are on a separate county-owned parcel), and already has a building on it. How would you design a high school to fit that space that would have even as many amenities as we're talking about at the CC site (which, for reference, is about the same size as the Hoffman Boston site at 8.5 acres)? If you come up with something great, feel free to scan and post it.
I didn't say anything about an addition and I never said it had to be a 2300-seat, full amenities high school. It could be middle school seats. It could be a K-8 immersion program. It could be the entire Montessori program. I pointed out that it was originally secondary seats to highlight that it is suitable for older children (and actually less suitable for ideal learning environments for little kids). And so what if it is more oblong than square, if you're talking about a brand new building on the current field spaces? You could build more stories rather than "snaking" it around the property. That's something you should do, anyway, to maximize outdoor resources.
APS accepts 3 acres (even a tad bit less when they have to....Fleet) for 750-seat elementary schools. 8.8 acres can certainly be put to better use than a 500-seat elementary school which has a good chunk of it taken up by preschool classes.
I'm sorry - I did refer to adding on or building a new building. But I maintain the points I'm trying to make.
