Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger is advocating for Burlington High School to be rebuilt downtown, even though a school district consultant has raised doubts about the prospect.
The mayor outlined his preference in a letter sent Friday to Burlington School Board members. It complements a resolution that Superintendent Tom Flanagan is expected to put forward at the body’s Sept. 14 meeting. The resolution recommends that the district zero in on two site options for a new high school: a downtown location on the Gateway Block or sites adjacent to the former high school campus.
The Burlington School District is moving swiftly through the site identification process to build a new high school on a tight time frame, after carcinogenic PCB chemicals were found throughout the old high school building and grounds last fall. The discovery shuttered the school and prompted students and teachers to temporarily resettle in the former Macy’s department store location downtown.
In August, consulting firm White + Burke Real Estate Advisors presented School Board members with 12 possible sites from which to choose.
The firm ranked the sites by multiple criteria, such as zoning feasibility, community support, land acquisition cost and transportation accessibility. Each of the criteria was weighted with a score from 1-5.
The two highest-scoring sites are both at the current high school location, 52 Institute Road, on the north and south side of the campus.
The Institute Road sites scored high because the land is owned by the city, and it has low zoning and permitting risk because of its former use as educational grounds. There’s also expected to be significant community support for the site.
The third highest-scoring site is Leddy Park, the fourth is Rock Point.
The mayor’s preference for a downtown Gateway Block — a stretch of land along Main Street encompassing lots adjacent to Memorial Auditorium — falls eighth on the list. Weinberger has long been eager to find a development plan for the area, but none have yet to materialize.
In his letter to the school board, the mayor said he thinks there are “numerous, significant ways” that the city could help the district develop the site. He said the city could conduct a “land swap” with the district for the downtown land and the former high school campus.
He also thinks a high school in the location could lead to a partnership with the adjacent Fletcher Free Library and allow the school to use Memorial Auditorium, which is currently closed awaiting renovations.
“From my perspective, the mayor wrote, “the Gateway Block offers a number of promising opportunities for cost-saving and value-adding collaboration, totaling potentially tens of millions of dollars, that will not be possible on any other site in the city.”
Downtown site locations did not score as well in the White + Burke rankings report because costs would be higher, residents might object, there could be insufficient parking and there might be more challenges around zoning and permitting.
“Any downtown site will be more challenging, costly and time consuming,” the consultants wrote. But the firm favored the Gateway Block over other downtown locations because parts of it are currently owned by the city, so land acquisition could be easier. The report mentioned that the owner of the two private parcels on that block is willing to redevelop the area with the school district.
“We expect there to be strong City and community support for keeping BHS/BTC at Institute Road and, in our opinion, these are the only sites that have a chance of meeting BSD’s aggressive occupancy schedule,” the firm stated in its report. The district is hoping to open the new school by 2025.
In his memo to school board members, Flanagan noted that while the former high school campus on Institute Road is “the most commonly preferred” site among community members, there is a “clear, though smaller, expression of support” for a new downtown high school.
“I agree that Institute Road is the most promising option but that a downtown site has the potential to bring interesting and exciting opportunities for deeper learning,” he wrote.
“That being the case, I believe we should do our due diligence to fully explore both the possibilities of Institute Road,” he said, “as well as the concept of a downtown high school and technical center.”
