Credit: Google Maps
A new elementary school may not be coming to Croydon.
After the Bristol Township Zoning Board denied the application for a new building at the site of the current Mary Devine Elementary School on Monday, officials from the Bristol Township School District and the new school planning team were set to go back to the drawing board, officials said.
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Superintendent Dr. Samuel Lee said he was surprised the Devine application was denied and added that project officials were going to see if anything could be done to change the plans so a school could be built at the site, which has just over 8 acres of its 22 in a floodplain. The plan presented Monday night put a bus driveway and part of a parking lot in the floodplain.
RELATED: 2 School Plans Approved, 1 Denied by Zoning Board
If the Devine site is not able to be used, Lee said the district would use the Lafayette Elementary School site, which is located on Fayette Drive behind Lower Bucks Hospital.
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“We always knew that Devine would be the most challenging,” Lee said.
Officials have talked for months that the high water table and large floodplain would be a problem.
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The Maple Shade Elementary School property on Prospect Avenue in Croydon has been ruled out due to its small size, Lee told LevittownNow.com.
Lee said the roadblock will cause construction for the one new school to be delayed, which will likely impact the planned September 2015 opening. He confirmed that work for the new buildings at the sites of James Buchanan Elementary School on Haines Road and Ralph Waldo Emerson Elementary School on Mill Creek Road in Levittown will move forward on schedule.
Due to the floodplain, planners hoped to build the new roughly 140,000-square-foot school at the Devine site where the current building sits, which would require demolition before construction. Lee said recently that students would likely be displaced as work on the new building began.
