By Adam Swift
The city council’s ways and means subcommittee will consider a $37 million bond authorization for the renovation of the McKinley School at its meeting on Monday, Feb. 9.
The renovated McKinley School will be the home of the new Metro North Regional Communications Center (MNRECC) for Revere, Chelsea, and Winthrop as well as a new early childhood center for the Revere schools and municipal office space for the city’s retirement board and parking department. Chelsea recently signed on as the third community for the regional communications center.
The total net cost to the city for the entire project will be about $17 million, according to Revere finance director Richard Viscay, since state grants will pay for the majority of the MNRECC portion of the project. However, to sign the contract for construction, Viscay said the city must bond the full amount needed. In addition to the bond amount, the schools have already contributed about $6 million for the project with ESSER Covid relief funds.
“We have now officially expanded to three communities (for MNRECC) which has been the hope of the city for many years; it was the original reason why we created this group for a regional call center … and with this build out, we will have the ability to add even more,” said Mayor Patrick Keefe.
Adding more communities to the regional center reduces the city’s overall assessment cost for operating the 911 call center by hundreds of thousands of dollars per year, the mayor said.
“I’m not going to pretend that this project is neutral, it is always going to cost us money,” said Keefe. “But we have a school that has been vacant for ten-plus years and we are going to give it new life and it is going to be put toward great community use.”
Planning and Community Development Director Tom Skwierawski said the project is really the renovation of two buildings – the historic 1904 school building and the new 1924 portion of the building.
The older portion of the building will house the municipal offices and early childhood center, while the 1924 wing will be the home to the MNRECC center.
“There will be a central corridor in between that will link the two buildings, but for all intents and purposes, there will be two separate buildings,” said Skwierawski. “They’re seismically separated, they have different systems, different modes of egress.”
He said the buildings will look similar, but that there will be some distinctive design characteristics to make them stand out and look different from each other. There will be 48 on- and off-street parking spaces for the complex, according to Skwierawski.
“As the mayor indicated, it is a building that has been vacant for over a decade, and I think we can all agree that what we see here will be a beautiful highlight to the neighborhood, the Broadway corridor, and just overall for the whole city,” he said.
The communications center will include a training and EOC center, a dispatch center, a bunk room and fitness center, and office space.
The early childhood center will have eight classrooms, which will be in addition to the eight early childhood classrooms the city already operates. In addition, there will be administrative space and offices as well as an indoor play/event space/multi-function room.
“The McKinley Early Childhood Education Center allows for preschool expansion, reduces the burden on our existing elementary schools, and it is going to serve a lot more families in the city,” said Skwierawski. “As we have talked about with the council in previous years, there is a real childcare need in the city, and this will meet that need.”
The municipal office space will serve the parking and retirement departments and will have its entrance on Foster Street. The city currently leases space for those departments, and this would move them into a building the city owns.
“Our goal is to start construction in late winter and open in the summer or fall of 2027,” said Skwierawski.
Ward 4 Councillor Paul Argenzio has requested that the tower necessary for the MNRECC come down in height if possible, but said he understood if the city wasn’t able to reduce the height.
“I’m very excited about this project in Ward 4,” he said. “The McKinley School for 10 years has been kind of a blight on the neighborhood, and it looks like a beautiful project.”
