School may be moved to park
Springs wants land for redevelopment
A Coral Springs park built by volunteers in the mid-1990s to stave off development may become the site of a school.
The city owns Coral Springs Charter School, at 3205 N. University Drive, but wants tomove it to free up the land it is on for downtown redevelopment. Also, students are taken on buses to ball fields, because the campus lacks them, officials said.
Now, the city has a new idea where to place the school: Betti Stradling Park, at 10301 Wiles Road. The land would remain a park, just have the addition of a school.
The park was created in 1996 by scores of volunteers who protested the city’s plan to allow businesses to bid on the land. Residents wanted open green space, and beat out proposals from a Baltimore Orioles training camp, a museum, and even talk of a new City Hall.
Vice Mayor Dan Daley said setting aside some of the park for the charter school is better
than its existing location, the former site of a shoppingmall.
“There’s only so many places we can put this thing,” Daley said. “The charter school has to move, hands down it has to move. It is in the worst location conceivable.”
In past years the city has proposed moving the school to a parking lot at the Performing Arts Center on Coral Springs Drive, or at Mullins Park.
The city wanted the school to have a new, threestory building with enough space to boost its capacity from1,645 students to 2,100. There is a waiting list of 2,200 students for the popular school, which is consistently rated an “A,” and serves grades 6-12.
Coral Springs residents are given priority enrollment.
But both ideas ofMullins Park and the arts center drew outrage from residents over traffic concerns.
Deputy City Manager Susan Grant said the city considered allowing the charter school to rebuild at the current site but nixed the plan, saying it still didn’t give the city back the land, give the students fields, and would subject them to the inconvenience of construction.
Mayor Skip Campbell agreed. He said Betti Stradling is thebest ideayet: “You can’t put it at Mullins Park, you’re taking away too much park space and creating too much traffic.”
Betti Stradling already has softball fields. And there is room to build a track field and football field, Grant said.
A three-story school and accompanying parking garage could be constructed on the site of the parking lot.
Commissioner Larry Vignola said he first brought up the idea of Betti Stradling more than four years ago.
“It’s a better fit,” he said. “Less people [nearby] will be directly affected by it. [And] it’s a more controlled campus. It’s a one-time opportunity. This fits all the needs — traffic [control], athletic facilities.”
Grant said the city will now begin reaching out to homeowner associations for feedback fromresidents.
“We don’t know if Betti Stradling will work,” she said, but it will be explored. “Is it feasible? We’re crunching some numbers.”
The city bought Coral SpringsMall in1999to close it down for the school. The main tenants — Eckerd, Ross Dress for Less, and Upton’s— had to relocate.
The park, opened in1997, was named after the late Elisabeth A. “Betti” Stradling, a middle school teacher and Coral Springs community volunteer who was the wife of a city commissioner.