By Kathleen Acuff

An early rendering by Pinewood School’s architectural firm, MKThink of San Francisco, gives an idea of how the new campus will appear from the corner of Fremont and Campbell avenues.

Pinewood School won unanimous approval last week to renovate its lower campus at 477 Fremont and 1012 Campbell avenues and to maintain its traditional enrollment of 125 kindergarten, first- and second-grade students at the site.

The Los Altos City Council, meeting March 14, approved the environmental mitigated negative declaration for the project, the design review application and the conditional-use permit, which formally allows 125 students rather than the 108 permitted in the original agreement. Since the school opened in 1985, it has had an annual enrollment of 125 students.

“We’re very happy now to have our enrollment number formalized. It’s a big relief to have it all behind us,” Pinewood President Scott Riches said Monday.

Riches added that construction will probably begin in summer 2007.

“That gives us time to find a location - we hope close by - to move the students offsite so construction will only take one year instead of two,” he said. “We also need time to find a contractor and for the architect to make technical drawings.”

The council also approved a variance for an 8-foot solid fence, the top 2 feet of which would be overlapping lattice, for noise reduction along the northern propproperty line, perpendicular to Fremont Avenue.

Councilmembers could not take action on Costello Acres residents’ request for a similar fence along the western property line because it was not on the agenda. They did, however, remand the matter to the Board of Adjustments, make the fence a condition of the use permit and waive the fees the school would normally pay for the variance.

Pinewood officials must in turn give the city annual reports of enrollment and efforts made toward traffic reduction. The council previously turned down the school’s proposal to expand onto property at 450 Covington Road and increase enrollment to 160 students.

The approved plans will replace the old school with three buildings having a total area of 14,050 square feet. Although they said they are pleased with the design of the new campus, which will be screened on the street sides by a shaded, meandering path, some of the neighbors at last week’s council meeting continued to express concern that traffic on their residential streets would increase.

Going far to win over most neighbors and the council is the driveway that will parallel Fremont then turn and run back to a loading area to pull cars off the street and onto the campus for delivering and picking up children. At the Traffic Commission’s request, Pinewood officials are considering the addition of a separate entrance to the campus for pedestrians and cyclists.