Bold Charter School Moving Into Bronx’s Former St. Thomas Aquinas Building

Bold Charter School will take over the shuttered St. Thomas Aquinas Elementary School in the Bronx, according to property records made public Friday.

Bold inked a three-year deal for the entire 12,000-square-foot building and play yard at 1909 Daly Avenue in the West Farms neighborhood, according to a lease memorandum signed in June. 

The deal has renewal options to let Bold extend it for another 29 years, property records show.

Asking rent at the four-story building, directly behind the 125-year-old St. Thomas Aquinas Church, is unclear. But asking rent for a similar deal Bold signed eight blocks away in 2022 was in the mid-$40s per square foot, as Commercial Observer previously reported.

The deal comes after the Archdiocese of New York announced in 2020 it was shutting down St. Thomas Aquinas along with 19 other parochial schools around New York City — the first of several waves of Catholic school closures in the area during the pandemic. 

But now the empty school is getting a second lease on life, and Bold is wasting no time moving all of its kindergarten through sixth-grade students into the building this fall, according to its website.

The charter school hired Epstein Architecture earlier this year to draw up plans to renovate the property ahead of the fall semester, according to Department of Buildings permits issued in May.

Bold Executive Director Andrew Foglia and a spokesperson for the archdiocese did not immediately respond to requests for comment. It’s unclear if there were any brokers involved in the deal.

Foglia founded the charter school in 2018 after a stint with Teach for America, and it opened its first location at 1090 Close Avenue in Soundview. It later added 1093 Southern Boulevard to its Bronx portfolio as its student enrollment grew. 

Bold also recently signed a leasehold condominium agreement at 1472 Boston Road, also in the Bronx’s District 12, to develop it into an 81,590-square-foot school set to open in 2025, as CO and New York YIMBY reported. 

The Boston Road campus, about a mile from 1909 Daly Avenue, will eventually serve 810 students in kindergarten through eighth grade, according to building permits.

It’s unclear what Bold’s plans are for the rest of its portfolio once the Boston Road building is complete.

Abigail Nehring can be reached at anehring@commercialobserver.com.