City Council Gets High School Project Update

By Adam Swift

It’s a busy holiday season for those working to build the new Revere High School.

A number of critical deadlines for the project are coming up by the end of the year, as consultants and engineers have been able to start analyzing the 33-acre Wonderland site that will be the site of the new high school.

Last week, the City Council got an update on the current status of the building project and the upcoming timeline from Brian Dakin, the senior project manager from Leftfield, the city’s project manager for the new high school.

Within the next several weeks, the School Committee and the council will vote on approving the schematic plans for the project, essentially setting a budget for the project as it moves before the Massachusetts School Building Authority (MSBA) for approval. Over the beginning of next year, the MSBA will decide whether it will approve the plans and maximum budget, and also determine the reimbursement amount the city will get from the state for the project, according to Dakin.

“Tonight, we just want to give you an update on the high school project, there are no motions or votes associated with this, but we will be back in two weeks to finish off the update,” Dakin told the council.

One of the highlights of the update was the news that the design and construction team have secured access to the Wonderland site within the past week and were on site on Monday.

“The project has consultants down on the site coordinating with some city engineers to do some initial survey work and geotechnical testing work and environmental testing work that is really going to set up the development … in terms of the design and the budget,” said Dakin. “We all know there are a lot of restrictions on this site, possibly the biggest of which is the Eastern County Ditch .. which kind of bisects the site into two pieces.”

Dakin noted that there will be environmental permitting through the Massachusetts Environmental Protection Agency (MEPA) that could last more than a year.

One of the critical aspects of that permitting will be whether MEPA considers the old Wonderland track to currently be a wetland site. That ruling will determine where the new school complex is situated on the property, whether the site has one or two athletic fields, and how much land on the property will be left over for development by the city.

“Even though we have been talking about this project for a handful of years, we are still really at the conclusion of schematic design, so we have another year to year and a half of design refinement and permitting,” said Dakin.

The preferred site plan for the new high school includes the two playing fields, land left over for the city, and has the school building on high ground close to the old track site.

If MEPA determines the old track is a wetlands area, the complex would have to shift further away from the track site, limiting the acreage that could be used.

Both site options have parking under the building, and vehicles entering and exiting the site from the two signaled intersections with plenty of queuing onsite for separate bus and vehicle pick ups and drop offs, according to Dakin.

“It will probably take until the middle of next year to get far enough into the permitting process to know if we are going to have to avoid that potential wetland up at the track loop,” said Dakin.

Where the building is located on the property won’t affect the design of the building.

The appearance of the building will follow a wave and ocean concept, with the four-story classroom wing resembling a wave.

As he presented the schematic plans for the exterior and interior of the new school, Dakin noted that the project is still in the schematic design stage, and there is still another 12 to 18 months of refinement of the plans in the works.

The main entry of the school will open onto a large, open cafeteria and commons area. There will also be an auditorium and performance space, and a four-story stacked athletic space, with locker rooms and JROTC space on the first floor and the gym on the second floor.

While there is not a field house planned for the new high school, Dakin said the gym will be able to support indoor track activities.

Plans also call for a ninth grade cafeteria on the second floor, and a media commons on the third floor.

“If you drive around the back of the building, you would be at grade and able to get into the garage area,” said Dakin. “Right now, there are 333 parking spaces.”

Who will be using the parking spaces and the possibility of using the parking after school hours will be worked out by the school and the city, he added.

“We anticipate in two weeks to present the results of the schematic design estimating process and to ask the city council to approve completion of schematic design,” said Dakin. “It’s not approving the design, the design’s not done; it’s not approving the final schedule, the schedule is going to evolve; it’s not approving a final number, the estimates are going to continue to evolve.”

In March, after the schematic plans and estimates are approved by the MSBA, Dakin said there will be a scope and budget agreement with the state that will be brought to the School Committee and council for approval. Those numbers, in turn, will ultimately set up the bond authorization and borrowing process for the project.

All through this process, Dakin said the design and permitting activities will continue.

“We are not bidding out the project really until 2024,” said Dakin.

He said it’s likely that both the bidding process and bond authorizations will be staggered, with the site prep and utility work looking to bid in early 2024.

The current timeline has construction being substantially complete by the summer of 2027, allowing students and staff to occupy the new school for the beginning of the 2027-28 school year that September.

“The big item we haven’t talked about is the budget, and we didn’t really want to show up with nothing on the budget and say we are in the process of doing the estimates,” said Dakin.

At the completion of the last phase of the preliminary design process, the Wonderland option for building was estimated to cost about $390,000 million, not including land acquisition costs. The city council recently approved spending nearly $30 million to acquire the Wonderland property.

That initial estimate had the MSBA covering $154 million of the cost through a grant, with the city’s total cost at $236 million.

Due to skyrocketing construction costs, Dakin said the estimate that comes forward in two weeks will be higher than $391 million.

“That’s mostly driven by extraordinary market escalation in construction that continued to go above and beyond what all estimators in my industry were previewing through the first few years of Covid,” said Dakin.

While the cost of the project should easily outpace the $400 million mark, Superintendent of Schools Dr. Dianne Kelly said there is some potential good news at the state and MSBA level. She said the MSBA could potentially put a freeze on funding all smaller projects so that it can increase funding for larger core projects such as the new Revere High School.