As bulldozers rumble across the 48-acre tract clearing what used to be Hickory Lake Apartments in Smyrna, the future of the site the city bought a year ago for $9.5 million is starting to take shape.
The land could be the home of a new charter school, according to an informal plan presented to city officials, who have been trying to sell the property while spending an additional $4 million to clear it for development.
Mayor Max Bacon said last week Smyrna is still marketing the property at the corner of Windy Hill and Old Concord roads to be redeveloped as a “gateway” into the city, and with some urgency: Smyrna wants the land sold and development begun by 2013, when the city is scheduled to make its first payment on bonds sold to buy the property.
The Smyrna Academy of Excellence is proposed as a STEM school with a curriculum of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. The plan fits Smyrna’s guidelines for redevelopment and its timeline, said Jimmy Arispe, the former Cobb educator who is spearheading the effort.
The school would be built on 20 acres of the 48-acre site as the “anchor” property. The remaining acreage would include senior living, a medical arts facility, a preschool, family fitness facility, retail and residential living. It would be open for business in 2013.
Arispe said the Smyrna Academy of Excellence has about 50 community backers and investors who plan to take “a hard proposal and letter of intent from the developer to the City of Smyrna by the middle of December,” then present it to the Cobb County Board of Education in late December or early January.
Arispe acknowledged there are political and financial hurdles to clear. The Cobb Board of Education, which must approve the charter school, rejected three out of four charter schools proposed in September. And the group is still assembling financial backing for the deal.
But the group has made progress, Arispe said. It obtained an $8,000 planning grant from the Georgia Department of Education in September, and this month submitted a $2.55 million grant application to the GA DOE Race To The Top (RT3) Innovation Fund. The Georgia RT3 is a $19.4 million fund that provides competitive grants to support new approaches to school improvement. The grant will be awarded on Jan. 9.
Arispe said he’s had informal conversations with school board members, but they’ve given him and the group no indication whether they would support or oppose the plan as conceived.
Putting a new school at the heart of a development has precedent, in East Lake in DeKalb County. But it would be the first of its kind in Cobb, Arispe said.
“We think a school is a better anchor than a retail store,” he said. “People will stay in a community, and move into a community because of schools.”
The proposed school would ultimately be kindergarten through the 12th grade, with about 2,000 students. The shorter-term goal is to establish a kindergarten-through-sixth grade school with about 680 students for the 2013 school year.
Smyrna mayor Bacon said he has no misgivings about a charter school in his city as the anchor of redevelopment, but he’s not sure what he thinks about the plan until the city gets a solid proposal.
“I’ve talked to them and I’ve basically said it sounds good what you want to do, but I want to see proof in the pudding,” Bacon said. “Who are your financial backers? Who are going to be the people at the table to participate in this? Talk is cheap. If they are serious, give us some earnest money.”
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