New School PlannedFor Flushing

A feasibility study for building a 350-seat pre-K to 3rd grade school in the heart of the giant Mitchell-Linden cooperative development, has triggered demands for additional traffic safe-guards, The Queens Courier has learned.
Councilwoman Julia Harrison (D-Flushing), C.B. 7 District Manager Marilyn Bitterman, and Marc Schiffman, president of the Mitchell-Linden Civic Association, said that the School Construction Authoritys proposed P.S. 242 school plan contains little provision for the safety of the hundreds of youngsters who will be bused to school, and almost none for the youngsters who will walk to class.
City Council hearings are scheduled to start in early March.
P.S. 242 is to be a 40,000 square-foot, three or four-story facility, built on an empty lot on the corner of 31st Road and 137th Avenue in Flushing. The school will also feature a 3,000 square-foot playground on the site.
The school is planned for the heart of the Mitchell-Linden housing development that encompasses 60 buildings on 14 blocks along a busy half-mile sector of the Whitestone Expressway. The giant 3,000-family co-op is home to an estimated 10,000 residents.
In a letter to the School Construction Authority, Harrison faulted the SCAs traffic study, because it was conducted 10 months before the opening of a nearby huge 565,000 square-foot shopping and multiplex theatre commercial center. The resulting heavier volumes on key roadways, said Harrison, had caused the city Department of Transportation to install traffic signals at two corners along 31st Road during recent years.
Another key community concern was the apparent indecision as to the location of the schools entrance. Calling for a school entrance on 137th Street, Harrison said that a school entrance on the narrow two-way 31st Road would "create morning and evening congestion when buses are delivering or picking up an estimated 185 youngsters."
The busy two-way street is only 30 feet wide, and is currently controlled by "no parking" rules.
She also pointed out that the preliminary study did not contain recommendations for adequate traffic safety controls at the schools oddly-angled intersection, nor was there mention of needed street lighting on the schools dimly-lit corner.
C.B. 7s Bitterman reminded the SCA that, within three blocks of the proposed school site, city, state and federal agencies are currently involved in a large number of governmental multi-million dollar street, highway, and infrastructure construction projects:
A major sewer line construction project is currently under way by the Department of Design and Construction. It is scheduled to link up with the giant 40 million gallon sewage retention tank, that is also under construction.
The massive Whitestone Expressway, service road, and Linden Place upgrading and reconstruction projects by the city and state DOTs, are scheduled to start soon.
The ongoing rapid expansion of the College Point Corporate Park.