Ground-breaking Friday for Shadle construction
After 50 years of educating students of northwest Spokane, Shadle Park High School is about to get a major overhaul.
In March 2003, voters approved a $165.3 million bond to update several Spokane Public Schools facilities.
Ferris High School got a new gymnasium, which opened in April, and major renovation of Rogers High School has been going on since last summer.
On Friday, the school district will hold a ground-breaking ceremony to signal the beginning of construction at Shadle Park.
The school will get a new library, while a gymnasium will be built on the site of the old swimming pool. Because the land where the pool was located is owned by the Spokane Parks and Recreation Department, the school district has signed a 50-year lease for the property.
The Field School, located to the north of the high school, will be demolished to make room for student and visitor parking. A commons area will be added, heating and cooling systems will be updated, classrooms will be renovated and enlarged and the safety and security system will be updated.
Designers also have moved the front entrance to look out over Shadle Park instead of Ash Street.
The modernization project was designed by NAC Architecture; Garco Construction of Spokane is general contractor.
Students still will attend classes at the school during construction, which posed a challenge for Greg Brown, director of capital projects for Spokane Public Schools.
He said 20 portable classrooms have been delivered, and classes will rotate into the portables while the renovation project is under way.
Brown, a Shadle Park graduate, took part in a series of conferences among the school district, community members and faculty members, who discussed what amenities and architectural features they would like in the district’s schools.
“They wanted each school to be a unique building,” said Mark Anderson, associate superintendent of school support services. He compared that preference with the “rainbow schools” built in the early 1980s, which all look alike.
The conferences came up with six common-ground design standards: integration between schools and community, flexibility, technology, identity/design, social standards and sustainability.
The identity/design standard states that the appearance of each school must reflect that of its neighborhood. The remodeled Shadle Park High School will be an updated version of its original design.
“Sustainability” refers to “green,” environmentally friendly building technology. The new Shadle Park design features lots of windows to let in light not only to help heat and cool the building but, according to Anderson, also to help students learn better.
The Shadle Park project is expected to cost $70 million, but not all the funds will come from the 2003 bond.
The state is providing matching funds of $32 million, and the project has received a $1 million grant from Avista.
The Spokane school district has plans to update more schools and intends to ask voters to approve another school bond in 2009.
The renovations at Shadle Park should take about two-and-a-half years to complete. The construction at Rogers High School should be done in 2009.
Shadle Park High School opened in 1957 after Jessie Comstock Shadle donated the land to the city in memory of her husband, Eugene Shadle. The Highlander mascot and green and gold school colors reflect Eugene Shadle’s family traditions in Scotland.
The original school cost about $2.79 million.
The ground-breaking ceremony, which will begin at 11:30 a.m. Friday, will include the Shadle Park student body, the high school band, the Highland Dancers and members of the community.
The school district invites the public to attend.