city government
Newman withdraws zoning requests, postpones preschool expansion
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After spending the summer meeting with neighbors and city officials, the Isidore Newman School has decided to withdraw a zoning request that would have allowed an expanded preschool facility for the coming year. Newman officials had planned to move their early childhood education facility, known as the Greenie House, into a cluster of reimagined houses at the corner of Loyola and Valmont. The project was due for a vote by City Council last Thursday, but the school instead withdrew its request altogether. It had become too late to begin construction and renovations in order to be ready for students by next fall, said Newman attorney Justin Schmidt in a telephone interview afterward, so the school leadership decided to postpone the entire project altogether. “Given that there were some delays in the approval process in this go-round, Newman realized it wasn’t going to make 2012 school year, and it just felt it would be better to withdraw and reapply once it spent more time looking at a complete master plan,” Schmidt said.