With Garden City Elementary School on its way to completion next fall, preparation for Gladstone Elementary School’s makeover is underway. Developers shared an initial review of plan sets with the city’s Planning Committee through an informational pre-application proposal. The developers intend to return to the Planning Commission for a master plan hearing in February.

Mike Zavalia, a registered professional civil engineer with Commonwealth Engineers in Providence, Christopher Lane of Finegold Alexander Architects and Inga Knox from Jacobs were present to discuss the project.

Zavalia said Gladstone Elementary School, located in the northwestern section of the city, has served the city well, however its time has come. The building will be replaced by a new state-of-the-art facility. 

The proposed new school will be located further up the hill toward the interior of the site; the site is roughly eight acres. The plan also calls for a driveway entrance in front of the building for buses during drop off and pick-up – this loop in front of the school would hold up to 10 buses simultaneously. Zavalia commented on the school’s current entrance where several roads come together and form a unique configuration, which can be a challenging area to navigate during certain times of day.

The plan also proposes visitor and admin parking in the interior of the drop off/pickup area – four spaces for admin parking and seven spaces for visitors that are restricted to non-bus times. There would be two additional parking lots on site, according to the plan set. The upper lot proposes 27 parking spaces and the lower lot proposes 29 spaces with four ADA spots.

There would be several outdoor play areas on the property; the existing playground in the northwest corner is city-owned and will remain in place.

Rhode Island Department of Education (RIDE) offered a consideration for the building plans – they suggested that it would be more expedient to provide a driveway connection from the lower parking lot directly to Lawrence Street and eliminate the on-site drop off/pickup queuing driveway from the lower driveway to the upper parking lot. This suggestion was modeled in an alternative plan that developers provided.