The former Sports Authority site. (Photo: QueensPost)
Sept. 12, 2019 By Christian Murray
The City Council is expected to give the School Construction Authority the green light to go ahead and build a 3,100-seat high school on Northern Boulevard when it comes up for a vote Thursday.
The high school is slated to go up on the corner of Northern Boulevard and 54th Street, on a 137,000 square foot lot that includes the former Sports Authority retail store and an adjacent parking lot.
The proposal was recently approved by the council’s Land Use committee and will be going before the council for a full vote this afternoon.
“I am fully supportive of this and I am sure my colleagues are too,” said Council Member Jimmy Van Bramer who represents the district where the school will be built. “The truth is we need more high schools, we need more seats.”
The school will go up in District 30, which incorporates Long Island City and Astoria, as well as parts of Sunnyside, Woodside and Jackson Heights. The city aims to open the building by September 2023.
The SCA plans to open three schools in the one building, according to Van Bramer. For instance, one might include a District 75 (special education) component.
The sporting goods store closed in 2016, when the Colorado-based company liquidated all of its U.S. locations. The property and the parking lot is owned by Pine Tree Realty Corp.
The School Construction Authority had originally planned to build a 1,000 seat high-school at the location–on a smaller piece of land.
The Northern Boulevard site is divided in to several parcels and the SCA only thought it was able to acquire the piece that was occupied by the sports store. In later negotiations, it worked out a deal with Pine Tree to acquire the adjacent parking areas.
The school building will now officially accommodate 3,079 seats.
The proposed site for the high school, outlined in red. (Google Maps)
Van Bramer said the public will get to weigh in on what type of high school it will be and other factors soon.
The City has completed other buildings for high school students in western Queens in recent years. The City completed a middle school/high school campus at 1-50 51st Avenue in Long Island City in 2013 that includes the Academy for Careers in Television & Film.
The SCA is currently building a 969 seat high school building at 40-11 28th St. in Long Island City. The building will be the new home for the Academy of American Studies.
Featured Events
13 Comments
so did the vote pass?
This will be slightly better than the homeless camp that is slowly growing in that parking lot.
Its a good spot for high school. Get on the train and buses and get out of here .
Excited! This is much needed since so many schools in the area are over crowded. Mega schools are tough though, so I hope they can incorporate a lot of sports facilities.
Sure build a school there, then complain about traffic on Northern Blvd. Sounds about right and quite familiar.
#1-high school students dont drive to school
#2- nothern boulevard is already at snail pace due to all the uber lyft drivers who cant drive without the app
#3- all people in this part of queens do is complain.
But that area is treacherous trying to cross that corner.
Thought we were getting rid of the large dinasaur
Schools.
Such a Bad Idea!!!!! but this is a Jimmy Van Bramer speciality. A Mega School, on a major thoroughfare Northern Blvd, a holding facility which can easily be converted in a DiBlasio community jail — 3,100 kids coming into this area of those about 1,000 are probably hoodlums and gang-members coming into the area – good for the McDonald’s across the street and the Taco Bell on the next block, for sure there will be a spike in crime throughout Woodside and Sunnyside with the influx of a minority who really want to learn and a majority who will not simply can’t basically ruining the area and add the new middle school on the 48th Street and it forever destroy the tranquility in the Sunnyside Gardens — with the Mayor and “Andele, Andele, Arriba, Arriba Carranza” plans on eliminating much needed specialized High Schools and Gifted and Talented programs WTF are they thinking!!! Basically let’s give the residents of community board 2 another shafting where the sun don’t shine.
Absolutely not! A high school is not ZONED for that area. Commercial!!!!
There are RESIDENTIAL apartment buildings only a block away…??
Dude you know nothing about zoning,
obviously.
These kids are going to get hit by cars come dismissal!
The speed limit is 25 – so no one should be getting hit. When the DOE wants to put a school in a mostly residential area – the locals complain about traffic and parking and when the DOE wants to put a school in a commercial area, people say it should be there! Guess we’ll have to put new schools on the moon. Also, the announced plan is to have 3 schools at this site – one small Special Ed, and two regular. Some of the best public high schools in NYC have thousands of students – Stuyvesant, Brooklyn Tech, Forest Hills, Bayside and Cardozo. Then there are excellent Catholic high schools like Molloy and St. Francis Prep, too.