By Adam Kramer
A solution has been found to alleviate the increased flow of traffic expected around the new Glen Oaks school campus on the Creedmoor property, which has worried many community residents.
The School Construction Authority, with the help of state Sen. Frank Padavan (R-Bellerose) and state Assemblyman Mark Weprin, (D-Bayside) has unveiled a plan that would keep most of the added traffic off Union Turnpike and Commonwealth Boulevard.
“The plan improves the traffic pattern in the surrounding communities,” said Padavan. “It is the best solution to the problem.”
The city Board of Education has started construction on three schools, an outdoor playground and 250 parking places on a 32.7-acre plot of Creedmoor. The educational campus will be completed in the summer of 2003.
The Glen Oaks school campus is at 78-70 Grand Central Parkway North, on a block bounded by Grand Central Parkway to the north, Commonwealth Boulevard to the east, Union Turnpike to the south and the Cross Island Parkway to the west.
Padavan said opponents of the project are residents who do not want any schools in their communities. He said there are no problems at Martin Van Buren HS, which is surrounded by homes and garden apartments and has 4,000 students. This campus, which is at 232nd Street and Hillside Avenue in Queens Village, will be half the size of Van Buren’s, he said.
“Schools are desperately needed, and I ask them to tell us what private land we can take to build schools,” Padavan said. “There is no land.”
The plan calls for school traffic going east to exit Union Turnpike onto a new road, which will connect to the existing roads in the Creedmoor campus. A similar plan will be used for traffic leaving the school campus.
Traffic traveling east from Glen Oaks and Bellerose on Union Turnpike or the Cross Island Parkway Service Road will enter and exit the campus onto a new access road. Students coming from the north will enter on Commonwealth Boulevard, but will be prevented from passing in front of Glen Oaks Village.
Padavan said the plan designed by the traffic guru Sam Schwartz came about through pressure from politicians, the commitment of a large sum of money from the Board of Education and the Board of Mental Health’s permission to build the new roads on it property.
“We are in favor of the big picture of what he [Padavan] has done and overall we are in favor of the plan,” said Richard Hellenbrecht, president of Community Board 13. “But the big problem is not enough information has been presented to the community.”
He said the board still has questions about the possible bottleneck at the schools’ access road and Union Turnpike in addition to the lack of public transportation to the campus. Hellenbrecht said there is only the Q46 bus, which cannot handle the student population.
But the biggest concern for the community, he said, is the placement of the three schools on the campus. The community board’s fear is that the high school is located too close to the elementary schools.
The two new elementary schools and one high school will house more than 2,800 students and alleviate some of the severe overcrowding that plagues city schools in northeast and southeast Queens.
The 350-acre Creedmoor property consists of 75 buildings used to house a wide variety of city and state agencies. The state psychiatric hospital is concentrated in Building No. 40, the largest structure on the campus, and has five other buildings for a chapel, administration and a museum.
School District 26, which covers northeast Queens, and School District 29, which includes a large segment of southeast Queens, now operate at 5 percent above capacity at the elementary school level and right at capacity at the intermediate school level, the SCA said. Queens high schools are running 24 percent over capacity, according to the agency.
Two of the schools, covering prekindergarten through eighth grade, will be run by the Chancellor’s School District and a high school will be under the Queens High School Division.
The elementary schools will hold 1,685 students: a 760-seat PS/IS 266Q and a 925-seat PS/IS 208Q serving Districts 26 and 29. The 1,182-seat high school — the High School of Teaching Professions — will be open to all Queens high school students.
Reach reporter Adam Kramer by e-mail at Timesledgr@aol.com or call 229-0300, Ext. 157.
