School Comes to Sea View – Farm Colony
New vision for a school on historic site
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
By YOAV GONEN
STATEN ISLAND ADVANCE
Starting today, the city Economic Development Corporation is expected to seek proposals for designs for a “post-secondary” educational facility on the historic site, according to City Councilman James Oddo.
The Request for Proposals process comes a little more than two years after the city undertook a more preliminary sounding of interest that elicited only one response — albeit an ambitious and seemingly workable idea for an educational facility, such as a college, trade school or similar post-high school institution, on the 59 acres.
One of the appealing points of the plan, according to Oddo (R-Mid-Island/Brooklyn) — who has been seeking to revitalize the abandoned site ever since preservationists alerted him to its import early in his Council tenure — is that it would preserve the 11 early-20th-century buildings that helped make the Farm Colony part of the city’s 48th Historic District.