TechTown's e-newsletter reports that renovation of TechOne, TechTown's business incubator facility, continues as additional conference rooms and office suites are prepared on the first floor for new tenants.

“By July 1 we will have built out 60 percent of the building,” TechTown Director Randal Charlton said. That’s close to 80,000 square feet.

The first floor is expected to be completely built out by the end of May. The fourth floor is expected to be ready for occupancy by July 1 for the Henry Ford Health System and the National Institutes of Health Perinatology Research Branch.

“It’s exciting to see this rapid growth,” TechTown Building Manager Cynthia Grayson said. “We have to expand quickly to meet the tenants’ increasing demands for office space and conference facilities.”

Three new companies will relocate to existing offices in TechTown in May: Direct Reality TV, a one-stop resource for customer support solutions including data cabling, network solutions and Web design; Stout Systems, a provider of contract and outsourced software development as well as recruiter of high-tech professionals; and The Employment Institute, a company with more than 20 years of experience in career counseling, career preparedness training, personal development training and staffing.

“I decided to move my company to TechTown for two reasons,” Direct Reality TV President Anthony Fuller said. “First, the location is convenient and allows us to serve our customers in Detroit more easily. Second, I value all the resources that TechTown offers my company. Being in a place with a high density of entrepreneurs is important.”

Also, the newsletter reports that construction is under way for a new charter elementary school in TechTown. The Thompson Foundation is funding renovation and construction of the school, directly adjacent to TechOne, TechTown’s business incubator headquarters.

The school is to open this fall.

The new elementary school, which hasn’t yet been named, will be a part of the University Preparatory Academy system and will be the Academy’s third school in TechTown. The Academy opened a middle school in 2000 with the sixth grade, and added a grade every year; its goal is to achieve graduation and college attendance rates of 90 percent. In 2003, a high school built by the Thompson Foundation was opened on Antoinette. In September 2005, the Academy opened the Ellen Thompson campus, its first charter elementary school. Both the high school and elementary school are located in TechTown’s 12-block research and technology park.

“We believed we could demonstrate that with Detroit children and a dramatically different school design, you could get the same graduation rates as Birmingham or Troy,” University Prep Superintendent Doug Ross said. “We believed we could show that the terrible high school dropout rate in Detroit is unnecessary.”

What is the dramatically different design?

“We focus first on one student at a time so that every student has a learning plan and individualized learning activities,” Ross said. “Second, we have our teachers stay with our students two to four years to build strong student-adult relationships and to make sure teachers know their students and parents extremely well. We also limit class size to 16 students.”

The academy purchased the elementary school building from GM.

“GM offered it to us at a very generous price,” Ross said. The facility was built originally as a parking structure by the internationally respected industrial architect Albert Kahn.

“The building of this charter elementary school is another important step in the regeneration of the TechTown area,” TechTown Director Randal Charlton said. “It’s great to be adjoining a place where young people are getting an excellent education.”

The first class for the new school already has been selected. The class has 384 students and, in combination with the first elementary school, will graduate enough fifth graders to fill the academy’s sixth-grade middle school class. Kim Llorens, a former teacher at UPA’s first elementary school, will be principal, and she’s hiring new teachers for the fall. There will be 24 homeroom teachers and a number of specialty teachers in art, music, physical education and special education.

Ross feels that the academy’s presence in TechTown is essential: “We want our children to be in the part of the city that’s being reborn. We worked closely with Wayne State President Irvin Reid to establish the University Preparatory Academy in TechTown. He envisioned a community here, not just a commercial park.”