By Madina Toure
At the monthly College Point Civic & Taxpayers Association meeting last week, City Councilman Paul Vallone (D-Bayside) said the former St. Fidelis School in College Point is set to become a middle school, the first in the neighborhood.
Speaking before about 40 people at the Poppenhusen Institute at 114-04 14th Road Oct. 20, Vallone said there is one tenant left at the former Catholic school at 124-06 14th Ave.
“That’s a huge victory,” Vallone said. “They just haven’t gotten to the point of announcing because it’s kind of tough to do because of the tenant, but these are the type of things you gotta work on and I think for once, that’s something. We don’t have to ship our kids over dangerous avenues.”
A spokesman for the city Department of Education said the DOE is in the process of finalizing the lease and will take over the building when the last tenant moves out.
The school requires construction and the planned opening date is September 2017, the spokesman said.
In June 2013, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn, which oversees Queens, permanently closed the school, which served students from kindergarten to eighth grade, due to declining enrollment and increased operation costs.
Andrew Rocco, vice president of the civic group, who was president at the time, created a petition to convert St. Fidelis into a public school once the diocese leaves.
Rocco said District 25 Superintendent Danielle Dimango has been supportive and understanding of the need for a school in College Point.
“We’re geographically isolated,” Rocco said in an interview with TimesLedger. “We’re a peninsula, we stick out into the sound there so we’ve only had two middle schools and they’re not in College Point.”
Vallone also said the first two phases of the ongoing project to renovate the 22-acre College Point Sports Complex have been completed but that phases three and four have yet to be completed. There is less than $2 million left for the project, which is estimated to cost $10 million.
Vallone said he has been in touch with Mayor Bill de Blasio’s office, which said it would look into the project. He also said he spoke with Queens Parks Commissioner Dorothy Lewandowski, who mentioned finishing up the parking lot.
Vallone said he was comfortable using the money for the parking lot but did not want to risk losing the $2 million that could be added other funds to finish the project.
“If we can get another $2 million and add it up to $4, I’d rather kind of stage us to finish something because I know no one’s going to come back here and say, ‘Let’s throw $8 million in and do a football field,’” he said. “It’s not going to happen. So while we have the momentum, I’m kind of thinking, why don’t we try to finish this thing the way we always envisioned it to be. If we can’t, we’ll fall back to a parking lot.”
The city Department of Design and Construction was the managing agency for the scope of the work, which included the construction of one little league ballfield, one baseball field, a roller hockey rink, a field house with bathrooms and a community room, landscaping, security paths and a fence.
The DDC completed its portion of the construction work in summer 2004.
Reach reporter Madina Toure by e-mail at mtour
