Buyers of Montgomery Estate Plan a 'Global' Private School

The prospective buyers of the former Grosvenor Estate in Bethesda, who had declined to identify themselves as rumors of the deal swirled in recent months, announced a plan yesterday to turn the 35-acre site into an internationally oriented private school with 14 grades and more than 1,600 students.

Two educational entrepreneurs, Channel One founder Christopher Whittle and former Yale University president Benno Schmidt, were in Bethesda to lay out plans for the school, which they hope will be the flagship for 60 similar campuses around the world.

Nations Academy will offer an International Baccalaureate-style curriculum from pre-kindergarten through 12th grade to the children of expatriates, diplomats, international businesspeople and others. A student admitted to any of the schools could enroll at another Nations Academy if the family is transferred, Whittle said.

"Every time these families move, they go through all the stress and trauma of finding new schools, and their children go through the trauma as well," Whittle said during an interview at the Bethesda Marriott, where he and Schmidt were holding meetings to announce the project. "We see it as the first truly global school."

Whittle said his company, also called Nations Academy, has an agreement to buy the property from the Renewable Natural Resources Foundation, which maintains an office park of environmental groups on the land. Whittle would not reveal the selling price or say whether the deal was contingent on the buyers' ability to secure the required county approval to open the school.

"Let's just say that we have an agreement and that some money has changed hands," Whittle said.

He described the costs of the Bethesda school as "a nine-figure project." Whittle and Schmidt, who together founded Edison Schools, an educational management company, said they hope to open the Bethesda school by fall 2010 along with a second campus being planned in Manhattan. Those would be followed by four others in 2011 and six in 2012 in cities including London, Shanghai, Paris, Hong Kong and Los Angeles.

Jeanne Allen Strother, a public relations consultant hired by the school, said that negotiations for the property began over the summer and that a firm agreement was reached in November.

The sale of the parcel, a forested enclave near the Beltway, Interstate 270 and the Rockville Pike, has been the subject of neighborhood speculation for months. Some associations in the area are veterans of development battles, and their leaders predict that the school will spark another.

"We were kind of blown away by the 1,600-students figure," said Ann Bryan, a former development chairwoman of the Wildwood Manor Citizens Association and one of the local leaders briefed on the project yesterday. "You only have one tiny way to get into that property, and if you block Grosvenor Lane, you shut off the pipeline between Rockville Pike and Old Georgetown Road."

Whittle said he hoped his team could appease neighborhood opposition early on by pledging to take concrete steps to reduce the impact of traffic on the area. The school would stagger class times, provide Metro shuttles, restrict on-campus parking to 300 spaces and institute other measures, he said.

He also said the school would restore the Tudor-style Grosvenor Mansion, open many of the school facilities to neighborhood use and leave almost all of the forest intact.