Officials representing both town governments and the Bristol Warren Regional School District agreed unanimously that, should voters approve a school construction bond in November, the bulk of that capital should go towards the complete demolition and reconstruction of a brand new Mt. Hope High School.

The course of action was decided following two meetings held on Thursday, June 29. — a morning meeting of the School Building Committee, comprised of educational administrators (including Superintendent Ana Riley and Mt. Hope Principal Michelle King), as well as Town Manager Kate Michaud and Bristol Town Administrator Steven Contente — and an evening meeting of the Bristol Warren School Committee.

At the morning meeting, representatives from PMA Consultants and architectural firm Perkins Eastman laid out the district’s progress with their application through the Rhode Island Department of Education (RIDE), and where things stood in their process of planning how to spend up to $200 million in hypothetical bond money.

The highlight of the meeting, and the lone vote taken, was deciding between multiple options for what could be done with the district’s lone high school, which was built nearly 60 years ago in 1965, and requires more than $13 million in critical repairs, according to a structural report conducted by the state.

It should be noted that at this point in the process, no design elements of the new high school have been decided upon, and will be the subject of multiple meetings in the coming months with stakeholders (including a community forum open to the public, date to be determined) to work out those details.

The next big deadline for the process is the Stage 2 submission with RIDE, which is due by Sept. 15.

Choosing a site
The district reported that it had looked into 27 different potential sites in Bristol and Warren that could possibly fit a new high school building (each needing to be at least seven acres). But only two of those sites proved to be potentially viable, according to PMA’s Managing Director, Chad Crittenden.

Fourteen of those sites had active wetlands or were in a flood zone, multiple were on the site of existing parks and recreation facilities for either town, and others had difficulties with access that would make placing a school infeasible.

One of the two potentially viable sites, a large field located off Asylum Road in Warren currently accessible via the Warren Bike Path near Hugh Cole Elementary School, ultimately also proved to have a “fatal flaw,” according to Crittenden, after further inspection. He reported there were wetlands that encroached too close, making the construction required for such a large project impossible.

That left the existing parcel where Mt. Hope currently sits, on Chestnut Street in Bristol, as the only viable parcel to move forward with.

Choosing a renovation option
Mark McCarthy, principal for Perkins Eastman, guided the committee through three renovation options for the high school: 1.) Repairing the existing school; 2.) A hybrid solution mixing new construction with renovation of certain existing structures; and 3.) Wholly new construction of a brand new building.

Each approach had pros and cons associated with it. Repairing and renovating the existing building, for example, had the lowest projected cost at around $152 million, but would take by far the longest (3-4 years optimistically), would be more disruptive to students during the process, and might not satisfy state requirements for school construction reimbursement.

“RIDE has made it very clear that this needs to be a 50-year building,” Crittenden said. “Generally, when you get into repair/renovation, it’s a little bit harder of a case to make.”

The hybrid solution would build a new school, but leave the existing gymnasium standing, as RIDE would only pay reimbursement on a new gym that is quite a bit smaller than the gym that currently stands at Mt. Hope. But in going over the differences in size for the gym, Superintendent Riley said that the school could get the same required uses out of a new, smaller gym (they could still break the smaller space into two gym areas, similar to what they currently use), and that there were other benefits to going smaller.

“Right now we have a big space, but it’s not an efficient space,” she said.
The hybrid option also looked into salvaging and renovating the existing auditorium, but committee members agreed that going from the current 600-seat space to a new, 500-seat auditorium (the maximum that would be reimbursable through RIDE) wouldn’t create an unworkable problem.

“We don’t feel like we would be losing anything programmatically for kids,” Riley said at the full school committee meeting on Thursday evening.

Since the hybrid solution also had the highest project initial price tag at $167 million, the school building committee was ultimately convinced that going the route of totally new construction was the best route, and that motion was agreed upon unanimously by both the school building committee and the school committee.

That option has a very preliminary price tag of about $158 million, but Crittenden was sure to clarify that the exact dollar amount would rely largely on yet to be determined details, such as the fluctuating cost of labor and building materials, and how the building is actually designed moving forward. That process, called a schematic design, will occur prior to when the district submits its Stage 2 application to RIDE by Sept. 15.
The initial estimate for how long the construction of a new high school would take was two years.

Choosing a basic design layout for the new school
The committee’s last order of business for the morning was to look into the options for the layout of the new school campus — including the height of the building, and the placement of the various athletic fields.

McCarthy presented four options for this, two of which included a two-story school building, and two of which revolved around a structure that was three stories high in certain areas.

One option that seemed to be particularly attractive to members of the committee involved a three-story structure that enabled them to place all playing fields directly on the same campus, necessitating only the removal of one practice field to do so. This option would allow all Mt. Hope sports teams to stay on campus during home games, and would also include the construction of a brand new turf football field, which would be able to double as a practice field to make up for the practice field lost to make room for other facilities.

“The option of having all the fields on-site also made the athletic director really happy,” Riley told the school committee.

However, both Contente and Michaud agreed that the committee needed more information regarding whether a three-story structure in any capacity was even allowable by local zoning code, so there was no action taken in terms of the big picture layout of the new school campus.

That decision will likely be made during their next meeting on July 13.