Summit Center has purchased a 55,000-square-foot building on Sweet Home Road in Amherst as part of a plan to expand its special education program for children, with the nonprofit saying it is adding preschool and early elementary classrooms to serve a waiting list of more than 500 children.
According to WGRZ, the planned facility is designed to include 20 preschool classrooms and four early elementary classrooms, along with indoor and outdoor play areas. The station reports the expansion is expected to eventually push the school's capacity to more than 650 students, and that Summit Center still needs to raise nearly $3.5 million to complete the project. Separately, WBEN reports Summit paid $3.75 million for the 55,000-square-foot building at 2420 Sweet Home Road, which was previously owned by Sweet Home Commerce Park Associates LLC, an affiliate of Ciminelli Real Estate Co.
Renovations Planned Before Students Move In
Per the same WBEN report, Summit will be renovating the building before any students arrive, with no firm timeline yet given for when classes will begin there. WGRZ reports that Summit Center CEO Lisa Foti said the project will take several years to complete and is part of a broader effort to expand the organization's educational programs, with the goal of creating more space for younger children while accommodating students who are moving into school-age programs.
This is not Summit's first expansion in recent years. The nonprofit's own materials describe a February 2024 expansion of Summit Academy's school-age program to include two former Autism Services, Inc. schools in Amherst and Buffalo, according to The Summit Center. Following that expansion, the organization reported its workforce had grown to approximately 600 employees across its four divisions.
A Program That Already Spans Dozens of Districts
In its 2023-2024 impact report, the organization said Summit Academy supported 450 students with autism and other developmental disabilities, with students residing in 47 school districts across Western New York, the nonprofit's report notes. The same report also describes a January 2024 partnership with Buffalo State University, which opened an inclusive full-day preschool classroom on the university's campus serving 16 students, half from Summit and half from Buffalo State's typical preschool classroom.
Summit Center's fundraising push is not new, either. A separate Building Hope capital campaign page from the organization described a $3.7 million goal, of which $1.3 million had been raised to date. That earlier campaign outlined a proposed Amherst campus focused on children with autism and significant behavioral challenges, including five new classrooms that would have joined Summit's property at 165 Creekside Drive with 15,000 square feet of adjacent space at 25 Woodridge Avenue. At the time that page was published, Summit Academy was described as serving 340 students ages 3-21. It is not clear from available records whether that earlier campus plan is connected to the Sweet Home Road building now being renovated.
What Comes Next for Families on the Waitlist
For the hundreds of families currently on Summit Center's waiting list, the Sweet Home Road purchase represents a concrete step toward more capacity, even as the organization continues raising money to finish the project. Whether the building ultimately mirrors the classroom counts and capacity figures reported by WGRZ, or evolves as renovations proceed, will likely become clearer as Summit Center moves closer to welcoming its first students at the new site.
