At a recent virtual meeting of the Revere High School Building Committee, committee members voted 9-1 to narrow down site options for building of a new Revere High School to only two potential sites in the city.
At the meeting representatives from Perkins Eastman suggested to the committee that the current site options be narrowed down to one, possibly two options.
At the meeting Dawn Guarriello from Perkins Eastman, the architecture firm chosen by the city to work on creating a new high school in the city, again showed three site options that included the existing RHS site, the Revere Housing Authority site on Cushman Avenue, and Wonderland.
At the meeting, committee member Patrick Keefe made a motion to continue to study just the existing Revere High School and Wonderland sites.
Committee member Susan Gravellese seconded Keefe’s motion. Only one committee member, Michael Piccardi, voted against the motion.
The plan to build a new state-of-the-art high school in the city started with six potential sites. One site was eliminated earlier on in the process and sites formerly considered on Squire Road and the Caddy Farms site in North Revere were also eliminated.
The vote also eliminated other scenarios for how the city would tackle building a new high school on the current RHS site.
The first scenario was to renovate the existing high school, build a new classroom wing to the east over the existing parking lot, renovate the large gymnasium, the kitchen, dining hall and then build a new auditorium. This would be done in phases with the last phase calling for demolishing the school street side of the existing building and building a new entryway.
The second scenario would be to build two new four story classroom buildings over the existing baseball field. This would be similar to the first option as it allows for the take down of the west side of the building with all new construction north and east of the field house. Then once the existing building is demolished a multipurpose field along Route 60 with some added tennis courts would be built.
Over the course of several meetings it has become clear that the third option of building an all new high school building would most likely be the best option for the site. A new high school would be erected on the existing fields and then once that building is complete the current high school would be torn down and the fields replicated on the site of the former high school.
There would be no educational impact and the students would continue to learn in the existing high school building as it stands. Then once the new building is complete the existing high school building would be demolished and ballfields would be placed where the building currently exists.
The Wonderland site, which are lagging in community polls as preferred options, mirrored some of the same design ideas and feel as keeping RHS on the current site.
