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Planning commission approves St. John Newman classroom addition and conditional gym option; traffic and access remain open issues
Summary
The commission approved a site plan for a roughly 7,100‑square‑foot classroom addition and a funding‑dependent ~5,000‑square‑foot gym at St. John Newman Catholic School; approval was subject to 11 staff conditions including dissolving the rectory property line. Commissioners and residents discussed traffic, potential alternative access and use of
The planning commission approved a site plan for St. John Newman Catholic School that includes a classroom addition of about 7,100 square feet and a funding‑dependent gym of roughly 5,000 square feet. Community Tectonics Architects presented the plan and said the addition will add classrooms for STEM, science and special‑education‑style learning and is not intended to substantially increase overall pupil population.
Bill Vincent of Community Tectonics said the addition would remove five parking spaces and create a new drop‑off/turnaround area; the project will also add sidewalks, landscaping and covered outdoor learning areas. The plan as presented includes pole lights near the turnaround that exceed foot‑candle limits at abutting residential property lines; staff told the commission the applicant may dissolve the rectory property line that currently separates the rectory parcel from the school parcel to address setback and lighting concerns. Dissolving that property line was listed as one of the site plan’s subject‑to conditions.
School officials and the project team told commissioners the addition is expected to accommodate about 20 more students (roughly 10 more families) and that overall vehicle trips would increase from about 250 to 260 per day — a roughly 4% increase. Bill Derbyshire, the parish director of operations and finance, said the school is operating near break‑even and that ongoing costs such as paid off‑duty sheriff staffing for traffic control would be costly; he encouraged discussion of volunteer trained traffic controllers or other low‑cost management options.
Commissioners asked staff and the applicant to explore whether the rectory driveway or circle driveway could be used to route some school traffic to Grigsby Chapel Road as a longer‑term mitigation, though staff and engineering raised concerns about topography, retaining walls, sight distance and whether a workable engineering solution exists. The school and architect said they are looking into dissolving the property line (subject to staff approval) and that a more extensive access change would likely require additional survey work, engineering and funding and could delay construction. The planning commission approved the site plan with the 11 staff subject‑to conditions; the vote was unanimous.
