School Withdraws Plans For Learning Center At Goodnoe Corner In Newtown

NEWTOWN TOWNSHIP, PA — Apple Montessori School has withdrawn its sketch plan to redevelop the former Rite Aid store at Goodnoe Corner with an early childhood learning center.

The New Jersey-based school also asked the township to pull its request for a conditional use hearing from consideration. The board of supervisors was scheduled to hear the conditional use this month.

It was unclear Monday night whether the school would be submitting new plans for the site or whether it is abandoning the plan altogether.

Township solicitor Dave Sander confirmed Wednesday that the school had pulled both its sketch plan and its conditional use request from the table. “They may or may not come back with a new plan,” he said.

When the school presented its sketch plan before the supervisors in August, the supervisors raised concerns over locating a school in a busy shopping center parking lot. At that meeting, the board also voted to hire outside counsel to oppose the school’s conditional use request.

Apple had proposed to open a 142 student, seven classroom school inside the former Rite Aid store at the Goodnoe Corner Shopping Center on North Sycamore Street. The store has been closed since August 2025.

Apple’s plan included the renovation of the nearly 10,000 square foot building into an infant to kindergarten early childhood learning center and the conversion of the east side parking area into an enclosed play area with cedar wood play structures and a salt water pool for exclusive use by the school strictly for swimming lessons.

The school had originally envisioned a 152 student school, but scaled that back after hearing planning commission concerns over the intensity of the use and parking impact. The school also revised its plans to include angled parking spaces along the western side of the building, the development of a new traffic circulation plan to improve flow around the proposed school, and the removal of an existing drive-through that had been used by the pharmacy.

Chris Gardyasz, representing ShopOne, the owner of the shopping center, told the supervisors that after considering several potential tenants, ShopOne felt the Apple School would be a good fit at the shopping center, which is anchored by the Green Parrot and Firstrust Bank.

“We felt given the complexity of the parking lot this is a nice fit,” he said, calling it “a strong opportunity for the center.”

Apple, which has been in business for 50 years, operates 22 early childhood centers in New Jersey and earlier this month opened its first Pennsylvania location in Warrington at the Shops at Valley Square. The school’s mission is to “enrich and inspire children to reach their fullest potential as kind, independent, confident, and curious individuals, for a lifetime of happiness and success.”

“We believe the adaptive reuse of the vacant Rite Aid is perfect for us,” the school’s development director Erica Amon told the supervisors, explaining that Apple likes to locate its schools at shopping centers. “We are also a permitted conditional use under township ordinances.”

Amon said the use would be complementary to the center, with school hours from 9 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. Monday to Friday with the school closing down just as the restaurants at the center are starting to get busy. The school is also closed on the weekend, a typically high demand time for restaurant use.

“We are a weekday-only, daytime-only operation at a shopping center that has several restaurants that are heavy demand weekend users,” she said.

After hearing the plan, supervisor Phil Calabro questioned locating a school in an already problematic parking lot.

“This parking lot is notoriously busy at all times. Whether you’re there at 8 a.m., noon or dinner time this is a dangerous parking lot for adults,” he said. “You can’t say with 100 percent certainty that none of these kids will escape and go running into that parking lot. This particular parking lot is a dangerous place for 142 kids, plus parents, plus workers to be running rampant.”

At one point, Supervisor Elen Snyder asked school leaders whether they had looked into the Newtown Business Commons where a new overlay district could better accommodate their needs.

“We changed zoning there so places like yours could go in without asking for variances and have a very easy time instead of picking this very difficult spot,” she said.