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Up Next for Memorial Drive Rebirth: a Progressive High School

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The New School's acquisition will pave way for up to 145 students

The flurry of investment along Memorial Drive will now include an upstart Atlanta high school that specializes in thinking out of the box.

Officials with The New School, which is currently based on Edgewood Avenue in Inman Park, closed last month on the former home of United Equipment Sales in the 600 block of Memorial Drive. It's a nondescript, brick building a couple of blocks west of Paces Properties' Atlanta Dairies adaptive-reuse venture.

The school's planned makeover on Memorial Drive will join more than two dozen projects on the beleaguered but resurgent corridor that span from downtown to Moreland Avenue — and beyond.

On a fundraising website, The New School's leaders enthuse that the purchase will let them "secure a permanent building and land that will allow us to grow in the coming years to our full size of about 145 students. And we’ve landed smack in the middle of a two mile stretch of Memorial Drive which is slated to see $600 million of redevelopment over the next couple of years."

School leaders joke they still need to raise $150,000 for "creature comforts" such as new sprinkler and HVAC systems, as well as a science lab, for starters.

According to an AJC story, the independent school opened in 2014, established by three former high school and college teachers who joined forces to "put together the plan for their dream high school." The school incorporates real-life fieldwork into lesson plans, such as an intensive study of Little Five Points that spawned a student-developed app that connects homeless people with vital services.