Crenshaw School plans move to new campus

Southwest Orange residents learned more details about The Crenshaw School’s plans to build a campus in their community during an Orange County-hosted meeting Wednesday, July 19, at St. Luke’s United Methodist Church. 

The school is seeking to relocate its campus from Gotha to a 5.47-acre lot north of County Road 545 and west of Interstate 4. 

Adriana Trujillo-Villa, assistant project manager, introduced the proposal before handing it over to Joseph Kovecses representing the applicant.

“In Gotha Rural Settlement, no complaints, same size,” Kovecses said of the school’s current location. “It’s moving to a better location, a better facility.”

Kovecses explained the request seeks to add a new use to one existing building in the already-approved Buena Vista Commons PD that exists on the site.

“We’re not proposing any changes to the site itself, so no new construction,” he said. “There’s an existing building that the school is going into. There will be interior renovations to the building, but it’s a brand-new building.”

Kovecses said the existing day care on the site will continue operation. 

He said the school will serve about 150 students in grades K through 12. The split is about 100 students in elementary and middle school, and about 50 in high school. 

The goal is to have 10 classrooms with 10 children in each class for a total of 100 students. However, the request plans for the max possibility of 150.

Kovecses said the start and end times will be staggered between elementary, middle and high school, as well as the day care. 

There will only be 10 staff members working for the school.

In addition to the classrooms, an inside gymnasium and cafeteria are part of the plans.

Tuition for the school will range from $11,000 to $16,000 per student, per school year.

“According to our plan, there will be no traffic waiting to drop off outside of the commercial planned development footprint,” Kovecses said. “The plan is to have internal capture of all of those kids getting dropped off. There’s a plan in place, so it will not affect anybody outside the bounds of that planned development.”

Some residents were concerned about parking and traffic. 

Momtaz Barq, engineer for the project, said there are 75 spaces designated for the school.

Because the proposed school is a private school, the applicant team said most students likely will be dropped off and picked up by parents, also reducing parking.

There is a total of 279 parking spaces required for the entire PD, based on the net office space, which is 80% of the gross space. 

There are 300 parking spaces total available in the parking provided.

The lease for the school would be 20 years if approved. 

Because the school is moving, the applicant team shared the school has currently only four students confirmed, as opposed to the previous count of more than 100 children.

“We still don’t know if we will have this location or not,” one employee of the school said. “I think that we just don’t have them yet because we don’t know if we will have a school, so parents are concerned. … We have high expectations that we will make this happen.”

The applicant is hoping to have the school approved and completed by the start of fall 2023. 

The project will next be heard Wednesday, July 26, by the Development Review Committee. 

The board will provide a recommendation for the project before it goes in front of the Board of County Commissioners. 

A date for the BCC meeting has not yet been set.