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Despite some financial uncertainty, the operators of the French American International School in the Northwest Hills hope to add a dedicated middle-school building as part of an ongoing redevelopment effort.

Proposal information recently submitted to the Portland Bureau of Development Services (BDS) calls for a new 21,000 square-foot, 16-classroom building, to be the new home of FAIS’ Gilkey Middle School, currently located in temporary on-site buildings. Additionally, the pre-K-8 academy intends to work with city planners on issues related to a 5,100 square-foot house on Northwest Cornell Road that the academy had acquired and is now using for school purposes.

The future two-story Gilkey building represents the first of four redevelopment stages for the immersive French-language institution. Earlier plans for a similar building were included in a 2005 Conditional Use Master Plan, which expired earlier this month. Because financing and scheduling of the second and third redevelopment stages are not certain, the school is seeking only approval for a new middle-school building, which requires a less-extensive Type III Conditional Use Permit, according to a project narrative submitted to BDS.

FAIS is a private nonprofit serving 575 students across 61,000 square feet on a 14.8-acre campus roughly bounded by Northwest 87th Avenue, Northwest Cornell Road and Northwest Miller Road. It lies in the vertiginous, housing-development pocked Northwest Hills Plan District and in the Lincoln cluster of schools. About 200 students in the sixth through eighth grades attend Gilkey, and 25 teachers work there.

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