The Bloomberg administration has hired some of the city’s top real estate brokers to hunt for space to build up to 90 new schools over the next five years, school construction officials said yesterday.
Searching for potential sites in the crammed city are the real estate firms Cushman and Wakefield, and Cornerstone and Staubach.
The firms were chosen through competitive bids, and they will be paid finder’s fees by owners of the properties if the city agrees to purchase them, a spokeswoman for the School Construction Authority said.
SCA president Bill Goldstein said site searches were previously conducted by “in-house” employees at the authority.
Goldstein also said the city is working on partnering with private firms to build facilities that will be shared by schools and businesses. Discussions are under way to build a combined office tower and high school on a lot behind Queens Borough Hall in Kew Gardens.
The mayor’s school construction czar said the city has to be creative because of dwindling space.
The announcement came as Bloomberg broke ground on what will become the first newly constructed city high school since his overhaul of school construction – the HS of Architecture and Urban Planning in Ozone Park, Queens.
The high school, serving 1,000 students, will open in the fall of 2006 and help relieve overcrowding at nearby John Adams and Richmond Hill high schools, community leaders said.
Under the SCA’s new construction and design guidelines, the contractor plans to build the school at $300 per square foot – $100 lower per foot than bids on projects last fall.
(p. 8 in metro)