Decatur’s city commission approved a site plan for a new 3-5 elementary school at Talley Street and South Columbia Drive last month.
Features include two two-story classroom wings facing Talley, with a courtyard between the west wing and the gymnasium/cafeteria on the campus’ south side. There will be a 40,000 square-foot play field, roughly the size of a soccer field, a smaller playground, a garden site, and areas for future permanent classroom expansion and modular classrooms if needed.
About 55 percent of the 6.38-acre site is green space while parking, through community input, was reduced by 60 percent to 99 spaces.
The building’s scheduled to open in time for the beginning of the 2019-20 school year with an anticipated enrollment of 750. On site demolition—which includes a number of warehouses and an office building—should begin in late winter/early spring.
Beginning in 2019-20 the city’s five lower elementary schools will lop off a grade and go K-2. Talley Street will be one of two 3-5 schools, the other at Fifth Avenue. Excepting Fifth Avenue, which opened in 2009 and occupies the site of an earlier school, Talley will be City Schools Decatur’s first completely new school since Renfroe in the early 1970s.
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