Atlanta chooses new Buckhead high school site

By Kristina Torres

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Atlanta school board members voted on Monday night to spend $56.2 million and buy a 56-acre site in northwest Atlanta for the city's new Buckhead-area high school.

The vote, which enables the school system to negotiate exclusively for the property, came a year after Atlanta officials announced plans to build a new high school to replace North Atlanta High School on Northside Drive in Buckhead. The new site is close: at the IBM complex on Northside Parkway. The board will take another vote to finalize the site's purchase, but officials expect no problems with the negotiation.

"We're thrilled that the board has finally committed to a site for a new school," said Cynthia Briscoe Brown, co-president of the North Atlanta Parents for Public Schools advocacy group.

Brown is among a number of parents who chastised Superintendent Beverly Hall after the system missed a self-imposed December deadline to identify a site for the new high school. "They've demonstrated their commitment to us and we fully support them as we move forward together," Brown said. "We look forward to the groundbreaking and to moving in as soon as possible."

Once the new campus is built -- a likely two-year-process -- North Atlanta will be turned into a second middle school, relieving an overcrowded Sutton Middle School on Powers Ferry Road near Chastain Park. Last year, Hall backed a plan promoted by parents to let kids stay together during their middle school years by using Sutton as a "sixth-grade academy" and sending seventh- and eighth-graders to a new middle school created out of North Atlanta High's relatively small campus.

Hall and other system officials steadfastly declined to identify the sites they were considering for the new high school. In October, however, a community advocate made public a letter to the owner of the Paces Apartments complex in Buckhead Village, suggesting the school system might seize his property through eminent domain, creating controversy. Nearby residents said the smaller property, while more centrally located, couldn't accommodate a comprehensive high school campus and complained the school would compound already heavy local traffic.

The system dropped that site two months later, and public speculation centered on the IBM site.

The Atlanta Business Chronicle reported in March that IBM might consolidate its Atlanta operations, possibly putting the Northside property in play. Jamestown, the company that owned the property, said it was always considering new real estate opportunities but was focused on another project, the redevelopment of Atlanta's City Hall East.

The IBM site is in the city's northwestern corner, away from the heart of Buckhead. It is not as centrally located as the Paces site, but its size will mitigate concerns about noise from athletic events, traffic and parking.