The City gave the Children’s Day School the OK to start work on their new middle school across the Street from Dolores Park, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

The private school was already over capacity at its current home at 333 Dolores St. and needed double the space to accommodate its growing Middle School. They bought the building at 601 Dolores Street last year for $6.6 Million, which is about $3.3 million less than the asking price in 2008.

The new 16,000-square-foot “Dolores Park Castle” will be classroom space for about 200 fifth-through eighth-graders, the Chronicles notes.

And what do the students think? “The kids look at the building and think ‘Hogwarts!’ ” Molly Huffman, the head of the school told the Chronicle.

Dolores Park Works, an advocacy organization aimed at improving Dolores Park, notes that the approval wasn’t easy, as the Planning Commission meeting lasted more than five hours.

“The discussion centered around the planned use of a roof deck as a classroom to teach sustainable urban gardening. Before its unanimous approval, the Commission added some conditions to the plan, including restrictions on any rooftop use after 9pm or any external lighting on the roof.”

On a related note: the San Francisco Planning + Urban Research Association is having a fundraiser there this Thursday.