Cold Spring Preschool Expansion Approved

Looking for silver linings to the pandemic? The Fair Haven-based kindergarten-through-sixth-grade independent Cold Spring School just found one.

The school, at the corner of Chapel and James Streets, had planned to add a modest addition to its preschool back long ago, way back in pre-pandemic times, March 2020. 

Then the pandemic struck. Work was suspended. In the interval, the school saw the large demand for its preschool option grow even more. Now it had a chance to rethink scale and configuration.

Tuesday night school board members and architects came to a Board of Zoning Appeals special meeting, convened over Zoom, with plans for a bigger addition. They received unanimous approvals for modest front and side yard setback variances requested for the project.

When the approval was granted in March 2020, only an addition was proposed to the existing pre-school building, which was slated to accommodate 10 to 15 pre-schoolers.

“We all know what happened after that, and the project was put on the shelf,” said David Thompson, a board member of the school.

“We managed to survive the pandemic fairly well. In the interim we’ve seen an extraordinary demand for preschool spaces. We see that as long term, not solely related to Covid. But this caused us to reconsider our 2020 plan.”

“The square footage of the proposed addition is similar,” Thompson continued, ​“but we have decided in the best interest of the school to remove the existing structure and to create a new preschool located closer to Chapel Street. By moving the location toward Chapel, we are now able to make all the outdoor campus space contiguous, so [kids] no longer have to go out on the public sidewalk” to move from one building or open area to another.

Those transfers from area to area required kids, accompanied by staff, to go out through a locked gate and out onto James Street. The proposed changes ​“from a safety and logistics point of view offer a terrific advantage,” Thompson said.

Because the 2020 approval has expired, the applicant was before the board to reapply. The school added requests for variances, because the proposed building now encroaches right up to the building line of the main brick building and the side yard close to the Central Labor Council Building at 267 Chapel St.

After the presentation, BZA Chairwoman Mildred Melendez moved to approve, and the other commissioners joined in a unanimous in-favor vote.