The school board whittled the locations for the future Burlington High School building down to two finalists Tuesday night: Institute Road or the downtown Gateway Block.
Burlington Superintendent Tom Flanagan recommended the two locations after the district received a report from consulting firm White + Burke Real Estate ranking the viability of 12 site options across the city. Institute Road, which includes two sites where the school could be built, topped the firm’s list, while the Gateway Block ranked eighth.
Last fall, the Burlington High School building was shuttered after cancer-causing PCB, or polychlorinated biphenyl, chemicals were found throughout the grounds at its Institute Road campus. The district now faces an exceptionally tight deadline to build a new high school by August 2025.
Board members voted unanimously to endorse the two finalists. Ahead of the board’s vote, Flanagan called it a “really important decision.”
The board is expected to officially choose a site by its November meeting.
Now, White + Burke will study the options over the next month to further determine their viability. Joe Weith, a senior project manager, said his firm will now hire engineers and architects to more deeply analyze the sites. They’ll assess whether a 300,000-square-foot building could fit at the locations along with about 300 parking spaces.
The two areas on Institute Road are located at the former campus — one on the north side, the other on the south. They ranked highest on White + Burke’s list because there would be no land acquisition costs, zoning wouldn’t be an issue and there is likely considerable community buy-in for both.
On the north side, the district could build next to the road, on top of the old site or in the middle of the campus, according to district spokesperson Russ Elek. Decontamination in this area is estimated to cost $20 million.
On the south side — which would not need decontamination — the district could build on the current baseball fields.
Then there’s the downtown location on the Gateway Block, a stretch of parcels on Main Street adjacent to the now-condemned Memorial Auditorium. It ranked in the bottom half of the White + Burke list, primarily because it would cost more to acquire, building would be more expensive and zoning issues could pose problems.
Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger, however, is throwing his weight behind the option. He sent a memo to the school board last week, asking board members to seriously consider it. The mayor has long wanted to develop the Gateway Block.
Flanagan said that 85% of the messages he’s received from community members support the Institute Road option. But he acknowledged that there is a strong group of community members advocating for a downtown location.
School Board member Martine Gulick said she supported moving forward with the two finalists presented by Flanagan but that she doesn’t want the district to lose the Institute Road location.
She said she would love for the Memorial Auditorium — a long-shuttered building adjacent to the Gateway Block, which Weinberger pitched as having potential use for the school — to become a downtown educational site but that she believes the main high school campus should remain at Institute Road.
“That property is a gem. It abuts 30 acres of beautiful forests,” she said. “It’s next to Rock Point, the Intervale, it has access to the lake, the bike path.”
School Board member Monika Ivancic also expressed concern about including the Memorial Auditorium in the new high school’s building plans. The almost century-old auditorium was closed in 2016 due to safety issues, including that it was structurally unsound and needs a new roof.
“We have no idea what’s wrong with that building. It’s been condemned. It has an open roof that wasn’t replaced properly. So water has been seeping into the building for many years,” she said. “Essentially, we don’t know what we’re getting into with Memorial Auditorium. But we know what’s wrong with the BHS at Institute Road.”
Flanagan said if White + Burke discovers significant issues in the next phase of its analysis, that would likely disqualify the Gateway Block site.
“Next month, if we realize that there’s a problem with Memorial Auditorium or with that site,” he said, “then that makes our decision crystal clear.”
