ST. LOUIS — A St. Louis charter school is pursuing a $16.5 million redevelopment of a Botanical Heights warehouse, part of a push to increase its physical space and number of enrolled students.
City Garden Montessori School, founded in 1995 and with its main location at 1618 Tower Grove Ave., said it could complete the redevelopment of 4209 Folsom Ave., which formerly housed a printing company, in time for fall classes. The school bought 4209 Folsom in June 2019 from Folsom Group LLC for $1 million, it said.
The plan, said City Garden CEO Christie Huck, is to house first- through eighth-grade students in the new 53,000-square-foot space, while preschool, kindergarten and a teacher-training institute will remain in the current, 29,000-square-foot headquarters it leases.
The change will allow City Garden to boost enrollment to 412 next year, up from 233 current students, Huck said. Enrollment could grow to more than 700 in the next several years, she added.
Staffing will also increase to 73 next year, up from 42.
Expansion was necessary, the school said, because it long received more applications each school year than it had space to accommodate. A 2018 expansion plan envisioned the school reaching nearly 10% of all elementary school-aged children in the city.
Click here for the full story.
