An elite private academy is set to open on the site of a longtime former Catholic school in Little Haiti.
Avenues: The World School, which opened in Manhattan in 2012 promising to become “architects of lives that transcend the ordinary,” will now have a Miami location on the site of the former Archbishop Curley-Notre Dame High School. That school closed last year due to falling enrollment after serving local kids for more than 60 years. Sale of the property closed earlier this month.
In an email, an Avenues spokesperson confirmed that an affiliate entity purchased the 15-acre property at 4949 NE Second Avenue. Miami-Dade property records show the purchase price was $60 million. The entity is registered to Bob Fisher, a San Francisco-based philanthropist and a member of the family that founded The Gap. Fisher did not respond to a request for comment.
Triple Five, the developer of Miami’s American Dream Mall, previously inked an agreement to purchase the Little Haiti property but announced this spring that they had pulled out. According to reports, Miami’s Archdiocese was asking about $65 million.
In a statement, the archdiocese said proceeds of the sale will be placed in a trust set aside for the long-term capital needs of the Archdiocese, and in an endowment for seminarian education. A portion of the proceeds will also be used to provide renovations to the Notre Dame d’Haiti adult learning center and scholarships for former Curley students now attending Msgr. Pace High School.
In a statement, Avenues said it hopes to begin offering programs for Miami students in 2021 and open its full campus in 2022, serving students ages 2-18. It expects tuition to be in line with other Avenues campuses “and other top independent schools in Miami.” Avenues’ New York campus charges $54,000 a year; the school also has campuses in Sao Paolo, Brazil