There may be a good reason for it, but so far city council has been unforthcoming on why it denied a special-use permit for expansion of the L. Hollingworth School for the Gifted and Talented.
Toledo City Council, by a 7-5 vote, last week voted down a permit requested by the school for a day care and a preschool at Miami and Nevada streets in East Toledo.
It would entail demolishing three homes and expanding the school’s footprint to most of a full block and utilizing a former law office.
The purpose of the expansion is to add a day-care center and a preschool, both valuable purposes in the community. The council member who represents District 3, Theresa Gadus, voted against it and didn’t respond to repeated requests for comment.
In Ohio law, if an applicant meets all the qualifications of a permit, the applicant is entitled to the permit.
The late Louis Escobar, a former city council president, used to preach that council could not deny a permit for anything except a valid land-use-related reason.
There are some complaints from the neighbors about additional parking and traffic problems and the loss of three habitable houses. The Toledo-Lucas County Plan Commission gave its approval, with appropriate conditions. If there are still traffic problems, council might try to mediate those, but there’s been no sign of any action except delay and inaction by council.
It’s true that Toledo needs new housing, but Miami is a busy street that is appropriate for office and commercial use. The site is properly zoned for this million-dollar-plus project.
Possibly, Toledo City Council harbors opposition to charter schools, of which the Hollingworth school is one. The Democratic Party, to which all but one of the 12 councilmen belong, is a staunch opponent of charter schools.
Hollingworth school has been at its location for nearly 15 years, and all under the same leadership, of founder and Superintendent Terrence Franklin.
Hollingworth school performs well compared with the Toledo Public Schools in East Toledo. According to the Ohio Department of Education, Hollingworth’s latest report card showed an Achievement Performance Index of 57.6 percent. All five TPS schools on the East Side have a lower performance index, between 40.1 percent and 52.7 percent.
Mayor Wade Kapszukiewicz, who came into office with the aspirational goal of creating universal pre-kindergarten, should be intervening to support the project so as to get more preschools into existence in East Toledo.
The proposed project is an appropriate use for the site, and the developers have demonstrated that they are good stewards of their property. The animosity coming out of the neighborhood suggests that the school needs to do some relationship-mending.
No land-use-based reason has been given by council’s no-voters. They’ll need a good one if this rejection gets appealed to Lucas County Common Pleas Court.
First Published August 25, 2023, 4:00 a.m.
