The Lower Manhattan School Overcrowding Task Force convinced the city’s Department of Education and School Construction Authority to scrap plans for a combined “gymnatorium” at the new school at Trinity Place, in favor of a full gym and a separate multi-purpose room.
BY DENNIS LYNCH
The city has dropped its plans for a “gymnatorium” at the new Trinity Place school in the Financial District, according to the chairwoman of Community Board 1’s Youth and Education Committee.
The gymnatorium concept — a combined gymnasium and auditorium space — has been standard in new school designs citywide for years, according to the Department of Education, but Downtowners pushed back hard, in part because the gymnatorium at the recently opened school at Peck Slip has proven inadequate.
Under pressure to can the combo, the DOE’s School Construction Authority confirmed at a recent meeting with the Lower Manhattan School Overcrowding Task Force that the Trinity Place school would have a separate gym and multi-purpose room, according to task force member and education committee chairwoman Tricia Joyce, who shared the news at CB1’s monthly meeting on Oct. 25.
“I think it was a combination of the fact that the issues at Peck Slip were reaching a pinnacle at the same time that they were beginning the design phase of the Trinity Place building, as well as our efforts by the [Lower Manhattan Task Force for School Overcrowding], so I think it was everything coming to a head,” she said.
Peck Slip School is currently trying to close off its eponymous street during school hours because it needs additional activity space for its nearly 400 students, so locals worried that a gymnatorium would also be insufficient for the 476-seat school planned for Trinity Place.
Residents, community leaders, and elected officials successfully pressed the DOE to eliminate the additional pre-K seats planned for the new school in favor of a full gym and auditorium, since Downtown already has a surplus of 250 pre-K seats.
The SCA may keep one pre-K section and still build a stage in what will now be the gymnasium at the Trinity Place school, according to the DOE, but the agency has not yet finished the designs for the school that will occupy six floors in the 40-story residential tower coming to Trinity Place.
A review by Joyce and Manhattan Youth, an after-school-program provider, found that gyms and auditoriums at Lower Manhattan schools were in almost constant use, before and after school, and on both weekdays and weekends. Auditoriums were utilized 75 percent of the time for performances, civic meetings, and other functions, while gyms were used consistently for school programming until 6 p.m. on weekdays and for sports leagues on weekends.
The founder of said there was no way any school or provider could offer the same volume of programming in a single gymnatorium as they could in two separate facilities.
“It’s self-evident — you can’t run a school play and a basketball game at the same time,” said Manhattan Youth’s Bob Townley. “A gymnatorium is neither fish nor fowl, you can’t run great gym programs in there, and the plays are also half-baked. Between scheduling and layout, it just doesn’t make sense in a city like ours.”
Both Joyce and Townley agreed that the DOE should connect with private developers as early as possible to design school spaces in new mixed-use and residential buildings, so the SCA doesn’t have to come in after the fact trying to fit adequate school facilities in spaces not designed for them.
Joyce said the SCA representative at the task force meeting told her that the DOE was dropping the gymnatorium concept as a standard citywide but the DOE would not confirm that, saying only that “We work closely with each community to construct a school that best meets the needs of families in the area.”
Joyce commended the DOE’s willingness to address community concerns and their efforts to make a difficult space work for the students, and said she was optimistic that they would respond to future concerns.
