School Comm., School Building Committee Vote Wonderland as Preferred Site for New High School

At a School Committee meeting Tuesday, members voted to recommend the former Wonderland Dogtrack as the preferred site for a new Revere High School. The recommendation will now go before the Revere City Council Monday for a final vote. If the City Council approves the project team will submit the preferred schematic report to the Massachusetts School Building Authority on March 2. The MSBA Board of Directors will then vote to either approve or reject the high school project.

The vote by the School Committee comes on the heels of a vote to recommend the Wonderland site by the Revere School Building Committee last week.

Committee member Carol Tye made the motions to accept the School Building Committee’s recommendation to make Wonderland the preferred site for a new high school.

The motion was passed unanimously by the School Committee with committee member Stacey Rizzo thanking architects from Perkins Eastman and project manager Leftfield for their guidance throughout the process as well as members of the School Building Committee.

“I think you’ve answered all my questions in the past two years and just want to say thank you to Perkins Eastman and Leftfield,” said Rizzo at Tuesday’s meeting. “Your guidance and your ability to explain things have made me truly comfortable with the decision I have made. It was truly a wonderful experience for the past two years. I look forward to the next few years coming and again thank you for everything you’ve done for the City of Revere. I also want to thank the School Builders Committee who really dedicated themselves to this work.”

The vote by both the School Committee and Building Committee to recommend Wonderland as the preferred site was a bit of a surprise seeing as community polling at previous meetings over the past year showed overwhelming support for building a new high school on the current Revere High School site.

While there were pros and cons that came with building a new high school at either Wonderland or the current Revere High site, the biggest con that emerged surrounding Wonderland was the cost.

According to the feasibility studies, Wonderland was by far the most costly and would run the city between $14 and $21 million more than building a new high school on the current Revere High site.

After being reimbursed by MSBA grants building a new high school at the Wonderland site would cost the city $259,907,570 out of pocket versus between $238,070,280 to $245,959,706 for the two options presented for building on the current Revere High site. The studies also showed the location at Wonderland was disconnected from the center of the community and

difficult to access versus the current Revere High site.

However, the studies also found the pros of building at Wonderland would maintain the existing high school and site for the potential future use as a middle school and/or community center.

There would also be no disruption to school operations during construction by building at Wonderland and would be comparatively less disruption to abutters.

The Wonderland site would be a single-phase construction unlike building on the current Revere High site, which would be done in phases.

Mayor Brian Arrigo also expressed his desire to acquire the entire 30 acre Wonderland site rather than just the 24 or so acres needed to build a new high school.

“One thing that we’ve gone through during this process has been kind of trying to figure out that if we go in and take the entire site we truly control our own destiny, both from a school building site portion, and what could happen on (the other portions of) the site,” said Arrigo. “I’m certainly supportive of taking the entire site and being able to really plan out and have the room and space to think about what that site looks like and really what could be with potential other uses on the other seven acre portion that may be developable. We want to make sure that (portion) is symbiotic to a high school as a use so it is important to have control of that entire site.”

Brian Dakin of Leftfield said the cost to purchase the entire site would cost the City around $30 million while purchasing only a portion of the Wonderland site needed to build a new high school would run about $23 million.