Latest High School Options Are Coming Into Focus

By Adam Swift

It was back to the drawing board for the Revere High School Building Committee after the City Council scuttled plans to build a new high school at the 33-acre Wonderland property earlier this year.

But now, the picture for building a new high school on the site of the current school is coming into focus, with four options on the table and a timeline that could see a new Revere High open for students in the fall of 2028.

Brian Dakin, the project manager for the high school project from Leftfield was in a familiar position Monday night, updating the City Council on the status of the building committee’s progress over the past four months.

Dakin outlined the timeline for choosing a new building option to proceed to schematic design with the goal of bringing a project before the Massachusetts School Building Authority (MSBA) next summer for funding approval. Dakin said one of the goals of the revised project is to keep the city’s share of the cost in the neighborhood of $300 million, with the MSBA picking up the remaining portion of the bill.

There was some good news on the financial front in the early design, as all four options currently under consideration do not include the moving or replacement of a 72-inch culvert on the high school property. In the earlier consideration of the current school site, the movement of the culvert to build a new school was considered prohibitively expensive.

The options under consideration range from four- to six-story buildings on the fields adjacent to the current high school. Dakin also noted that it is likely that the project will not be hamstrung by the state’s Article 97, which requires that park property be replaced up front if it is taken for a building project.

Dakin said it is possible that with the proposed configurations, the soccer field on the property would be replaced after the project was completed. He also said the city is looking into legal documents to see if the baseball diamond on the property is actually school and not city property.

Perhaps most importantly for those who live in the neighborhoods around the school, Dakin reiterated that there will be no need for the city to take any property by eminent domain to build the new school.

It was a point that was repeated by several councilors during the course of Monday night’s meeting

“We want to dispel the talk among the neighbors, there is no eminent domain, we are not taking anyone’s property in that neighborhood,” said Councillor-at-Large Anthony Zambuto.

The goal of all the options under consideration is to build on the two fields behind the high school, the baseball diamond and the soccer field along American Legion Highway. Building a taller school on that section of the property would help alleviate the need to address issues with the culvert, as well as decrease the need for temporary parking on other fields during the duration of construction.

“When I say a five or six story building, it wouldn’t really be the entire building, it would be the major … academic space,” said Dakin. “These decisions haven’t been made, but you can see that options that are six-story options … are leaving the most site and program space. It backs the project as far off the existing parking and the neighborhood as it possibly can, leaving as much space for surface parking, emergency vehicle access, and site programs and pedestrian paths.”

Over the next several months, Dakin said the building committee will be honing down the design plans and coming up with preliminary budget numbers and timelines for each option.

“We’ve seen some good news with the culvert, we’ve seen some good news hopefully trending in the right direction with Article 97, and we have at least four viable options,” said Dakin.

He said determining the hard numbers on the options will start getting phased in over the next month or so.

“Our goal is that we try to meet the local share that we were presenting for the last version of the project,” said Dakin. “Some items, if the culvert is not attached to this, if we don’t have to replace three parks, I think we have a really good fighting shot of hitting the local share of $300 million.”

The goal is to have an option selected in the winter of 2024, allowing for several months of schematic design before a schematic presentation to the MSBA next spring. Dakin said the council would likely have to vote on the funding of a new project next summer.

Councillor-at-Large Steve Morabito asked about the likelihood of the MSBA approving funding for a portion of the project cost.

The MSBA approved a feasibility study extension earlier this year, with the expectation it would receive a schematic design submission for next June’s board meeting, Dakin said. He said if the city sticks by that timeline, he said the MSBA will likely be receptive to the project.

“They want to see this high school built,” Dakin said. Council President Pro Tem Joanne McKenna noted that Dakin will be appearing before the council on a monthly basis to update it on the progress of the high school building process.