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DANBURY — The city envisions creating a $45 million career academy for middle and high school students in the former Matrix building.

The academy would address the district’s burgeoning enrollment and help fill out a 1.2 million square-foot building on the west side of the city that has sat mostly vacant for years.

“This approach, if everything goes well, will really allow us to be ahead of the actual heightened population growth that's supposed to hit us,” Antonio Iadarola, director of public works and city engineer, said at Monday’s virtual 2020 Task Force meeting.

This task force is developing plans to deal with overcrowding in the schools, with the student population projected to increase by as much as 7.1 percent over the next 10 years. The city is applying for a state grant to create a seven-classroom annex for Ellsworth Avenue Elementary School, while 10 new preschool classrooms are expected to be ready this fall.

Developers are looking to create what they have called a “city within a city” at the former Union Carbide world headquarters, now called Summit @ Danbury. The developers have already brought in businesses and aim to build 400 apartments.

Mayor Mark Boughton said this academy would be a “school within a school,” with him envisioning that students would still participate in extracurricular activities, such as athletics, at the regular middle and high schools.

“The idea here is to link up with various businesses, agencies, nonprofits in Danbury to provide a training opportunity—an externship, internship, whatever you want to call it— for our students, as well as, of course, academic classroom(s),” he said at the task force meeting.

The city plans to seek a higher reimbursement rate of 80 percent from the state for this latest project, Boughton said. Danbury expects a 63 percent reimbursement rate for the Ellsworth annex project.

Rather than hiring an architect and construction company and managing the project itself, the city plans to hand off its design requirements and purchase the space once it is built, he said.

This “design-build” method is unique from any other school project the state has granted reimbursement for, so the state legislature will need to pass a bill approving this, Boughton said.

Boughton said he has a “loose agreement” with the governor, who is on board with the idea. But state officials are visiting the building on Thursday, when city officials expect to get a better sense of the state’s appetite for the approach.

This story will be updated.

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Amazon's new Danbury facility will bring "at least 400 new jobs and several opportunities for Danbury residents," said Mayor Mark Boughton.

DANBURY, CT — Amazon is coming to the city after all.

Just three years after Mayor Mark Boughton's video plea, Amazon decided to give Danbury a second look. This fall, Amazon will be repurposing the former Scholastic Corporation on Old Sherman Turnpike into a distribution facility.

"We are so excited to bring Amazon here to the City of Danbury," Boughton said. "We anticipate at least 400 new jobs and several opportunities for Danbury residents. This is a huge economic opportunity for the city and will generate hundreds of thousands of dollars in tax revenue."

The 147,000-square-foot facility is expected to create several hundreds of jobs, according to a news release from City Hall.

"The City of Danbury was an absolute pleasure to work with on this project, everyone in City Hall and those on the various boards made the entire process very simple in a very complicated time. In all my experience with entitlements throughout the State of CT, I have never worked with a municipality that has been so fair and moved at such an efficient pace," said Phil DiGennaro, managing member for Sound Development Group and property owner of the facility. "It is always satisfying to be a part of revitalization and redevelopment. In this case, transforming an older asset into a state of the art facility for today's environment."