801 N. Peak
There’s another expansion on the books for Spanish House, the East Dallas-based dual-language program.
Back in July, Spanish House’s co-founder, Catherine Wallace, who created the school with her husband, Luis Martinez, told us they purchased 1.5-acre of land at 7157 E. Grand in the Hollywood Heights neighborhood, where they’re in the process of building a 15-classroom elementary school to be completed by August 2016.
The location on Grand is intended to accommodate the growing number of elementary students who attend the school. Currently, the school has 65 elementary students, but that’s expected to increase to 200 by the time the new site reaches capacity, Wallace told us in July.
But that’s only the half of it.
Wallace and Martinez originally started Spanish House in the spare bedroom of their East Dallas home in 2008, providing Spanish and English-as-a-Second-Language classes for adult students, and now they’re relocation and expanding the adult program as well.
They bought a building at 801 N. Peak Street, near the Peak and Gaston intersection, and they hope to open the location later this month, on Feb. 15.
Extra rooms will allow them to expand the adult program. The adult program, which is for working professionals at night during the week, includes eight different levels of Spanish immersion classes. The instructors are all Spanish-speakers and the classes are 100 percent in Spanish, even the beginning classes.
They’ll move the admin offices to Gaston and Peak. Plus, they hope to start offering salsa, yoga and Zumba classes and even some cooking classes, featuring Latin American dishes.
“Those are just extra services we want to provide on weekends,” Wallace explains.
The building has been under construction for a few months, and the rezoning application was approved last week. Wallace says they’ve requested final inspection for later this week, but they don’t expect any problems.
“So far everything has fallen into place just fine,” she says.
