CREC Applies for Temporary Magnet School Site in Avon

The new facility in Avon won’t open on 59 Waterville Road until at least September 2013, but the Capitol Region Education Council (CREC) is looking at a temporary site for a larger student body in the meantime.

CREC has applied for a special permit to move Reggio students from its 150 Fisher Drive location to 20 Security Drive, according to Avon Town Planner Steven Kushner. Mark Greenberg, who is running to represent Connecticut's fifth district in Congress, owns the former Security Life insurance building.

Reggio currently has less than 250 students from pre-kindergarten to second grade. CREC has requested permission to house 400 students at the prospective temporary building for at least two years until the permanent site is ready, Kushner said. That includes the addition of third and fourth graders and students from a daycare center that CREC recently bought in Simsbury, he said.

While the building is already “adaptable to parent drop-off” and won’t change much on the outside, Kushner said, CREC officials expressed to him that the project would entail around $1 million in improvements, including the interior.

The Security Drive building is 100,000 square feet and, if approved, CREC would rent 45,000 square feet of the space, Kushner said.

The Avon Planning and Zoning Commission is scheduled to discuss the application at its meeting Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. in the Selectmen’s Conference Room in Avon Town Hall Building One.