In The News
Posh Schools set Sites on Their Futures
Daily News
Sunday Real Estate Section
July 16, 1989
The headmasters of two of Manhattan's most exclusive private schools have offered their institutions' lucrative real estate locations recently for tens of millions of dollars to offset their increasing costs and future expansion.
The Birch Wathen School, originally at 9 E. 71st St. was sold to the ladies clothing king, Leslie Wexner (The Limited vertical clothing store on Madison Ave.), reportedly for $13 million. And The Fleming School is now on the block, including two buildings at 10 and 35 E. 62d St. for $20 million, according to real estate professionals close to the transactions.
Birch Wathen School is moving to 210 E. 77th St. and The Fleming School to the site of the Notre Dame School on W. 79th and 78th Sts., between Columbus and Amsterdam aves (sic). The Fleming School is in an agreement to purchase, according to attorney Cheryl Khaner, of Belkin, Burden, Wenig & Goldman and the broker Williamson, Picket & Gross.
Along with the attraction of Manhattan's residential real estate market for a professional, upscale mom and dad, there is the importance of the schools in their neighborhood. And the alternative of New York's private, independent schools always has attracted the children of some of the world's (sic) very rich and famous.
Financial crunch
Now, as they approach the 90's, some of these schools are facing a budget squeeze and looking for ways to survive and/or expand. The answer for some "newer" institutions was to cash in on the real estate under and around them. It will enable them to enhance their facilities in new quarters and sometimes to acquire the ever-important endowment that will bring them into the next century.
What this has done, though, is start a game of musical schools, with one sale and move directly affecting and sometimes accentuating another.
In the Birch Wathen move, The New Lincoln School sold its building to it and merged with the Walden School at 1 W. 88th St. Along with $7 million generated by the sale and brought to it by The New Lincoln School, the Walden School has agreed to the construction of condominiums above and adjacent to its building for which it will be given additional school facilities as part of the development.
According to Brian Wright, headmaster of Birch Wathen, "This allowed us to move into an adequate facility and to be more competitive with teacher salaries.
"Any school offering a strong education has to have a competitive facility and an endowment."
The now former Birch Wathen site on E. 71st St. was a townhouse once owned by Herbert N. Straus, the family of Macy's fame. It was built in 1932. Straus died before its completion. The Fleming School sites on E. 62d St. also have the distinction as architectural examples of early 1900 townhouses. All three are highlighted in the in the American Institute of Architects Guide to New York City. The Fleming School sites, turn of the century limestone mansions in the neo-classical vein, are described as a "visual delight" (10 E. 62 St.) and "a fugue of form and ornament (35 E. 62d St.)."
According to The Fleming School headmaster Ray-Eric Correa, "The trends (sic) in independent schools is to keep your ear to the ground in how to secure the future financially. There are (sic) a smaller pool of students now, and it is more competitive. The marketing strategies are more sophisticated. We see some 250 parents who look at our facility each year."
(Correa's mother, Douce Fleming, founded the school in 1956 to strengthen American and French cultural connections by teaching the French language.)
He said that the move would allow the school to have a cafeteria, air conditioning and "put it under one roof."
High tuitions
The Fleming School handles pre-school through eighth grade with tuitions ranging from $6,000 to $8,000 a year. Birch Wathen teaches elementary and high school and ranges from $7,000 to $10,000 a year in tuition.
Both schools have an enrollment of about 300 students. The Birch Wathen move will be completed this September and the target for The Fleming School is September of next year.