For the second time, the Princeton International Academy Charter School (PIACS) will try its hand at receiving zoning approval to open its facility — this time at a site in South Brunswick.
PIACS will appear before the South Brunswick Zoning Board on Thursday, April 14, for a use variance and amended preliminary and final site plan approval with bulk variance relief and waivers for a charter school and a private school facility on an 11.79-acre site on Perrine Road in the office-research zone.
According to information provided by South Brunswick officials, the site of the proposed charter school is at 12 Perrine Road in South Brunswick — on a site near the Plainsboro border at Schalks Crossing Road.
According to application documents, the application on behalf of the charter school was made by 12 P & Associates, LLC, of Lake Drive in Princeton — which is also listed as the contract purchaser. The current owner of the site is AVN Holding, LLC, which operates in Suite 103 on 12 Perrine Road.
According to information listed on Loopnet.com about the “Perrine Center” at 12 Perrine Road, 49,000 square feet of office space was developed in 1973 on the site, which is near Princeton Forrestal Center. The property listing states the site has a “campus atmosphere” that is “ideal for single user.” The site also has approval for additional 85,000 square feet on the 11.79-acres site.
The charter school, which plans to open in September, 2011, will consist of students from the Princeton, South Brunswick, and West Windsor-Plainsboro school districts if it obtains final approval. The school will be the first to offer an International Baccalaureate (IB) curriculum framework as well as dual language Mandarin-English immersion.
The PIACS website states that by February, 2011, 129 students had enrolled in kindergarten, first grade, and second grade, with an additional 12 applications planning to bring in their paperwork. There are 61 student son the out-of-district waiting lists.
Since it first began planning to open in September, 2010, PIACS has been faced with staunch opposition from residents who live within the school districts where the charter school will draw its students.
Opponents were successful last year, when a confluence of events shut down PIACS’s efforts to open last September. The last and final blow was PIACs’ failure to obtain an extension from the state to buy time to get zoning approval from Plainsboro Township to move into St. Joseph’s Seminary on Mapleton Road.
Last July, a hearing on a use variance at the Plainsboro Zoning Board for PIACS to occupy St. Joseph’s Seminary was canceled at the last minute after the state Department of Education’s denied PIACS’s request for an extension to a July 15 deadline to obtain a certificate of occupancy (CO) for the Mapleton Road seminary. PIACS missed the original deadline due to the postponement of the originally scheduled Zoning Board hearing due to a technicality earlier that month.
The CO was the last step in the final approval for the charter school to open in September. However, the DOE did give the charter school an entire year to find a facility and obtain a CO — without having to repeat the process of re-applying for its charter at the state level. PIACS officials hope to open in September, 2011.
The lease agreement that PIACS had with St. Joseph’s Seminary was contingent upon the school receiving the official charter from the DOE, which it did not obtain because it missed the deadline.
During the initial hearing at the Zoning Board in Plainsboro, the board determined it should not hear the application after counsel for the WW-P District pointed out that the notice sent by the charter school of the meeting did not list the township’s hours of operation, as required by state law.
