Three site plan options are being considered for the new $158 million Gahanna Lincoln High School, with a decision expected in February.
District officials, DLR Group and Construction Ruscilli met with neighbors near the high school, with the final meeting and options presented Jan. 12.
After further deliberations with the community at large and the senior facilities planning committee, Judy Hengstebeck, district communications coordinator, said Superintendent Steve Barrett plans to recommend a site plan to the school board in February.
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She said Option 1, also called Option A, was an original design shown to the community.
She said Option 2 (B) is similar to a plan presented earlier, but in this design the building has been reversed so that the entrance faces the neighborhood rather than the rear of the building. Option 3 (C) is a new design.
The priorities the neighbors wanted in the design options included keeping the current stadium, keeping the school one room, maximizing sound/noise buffer, 3 story building, maximizing green space, retaining the veterans memorial, retaining the current auditorium, a buffer natural landscape, a traffic light, and moving the stadium to another location.
>> See the three options
Paul Lawton, architect of the DLR Group, said an effort had been made to come up with designs taking into account the neighbours’ objectives.
“A traffic light is beyond our design power,” he said. “I think moving the stadium totally offsite, at the time I think the context was sort of in the Blacklick area. It’s going to be pretty tough, but we made it in option C. A third one that was a bit out of our hands right now was guarding the auditorium. The other seven, however, we did our best to accommodate.
Keeping the stadium in its current location is option B(2), Lawton said.
“We kept the position of the current stadium,” he said. “What we did was we took the floor plan of the building and mirrored it from east to west and then moved it to the east side of this stadium so that the relationship between the stadium and the building remains the same. There are synergies there that we have tried to keep, and we think it works from that point of view. The one-class school, we have approached it. In this one, we moved it to the west of the stadium. Coming down Hamilton, you would see it at the back of those bleachers.
Lawton said the building would help act as a buffer against sound and noise in this plan.
As designers, he said, they try to minimize the footprint of the entire high school, so the building is 3 stories tall.
“The southern and northern parts are the gymnasiums and auditoriums, so these will naturally be 2 stories, but the main core of the building where the academic wings are – it’s a 3 story space,” Lawton said. “No. 5 (priority) is to maximize green space. As you know from the metrics we’ve shared, we have parking counts that we need to meet, based on code occupancy/gathering rates from the city to the auditorium/gym etc. We tried, of course, that’s our intention, we love greenery as much as you do, so we’ve done our best to maximize that.
He said all three options retain the veterans’ memorial.
This natural landscape area is increased along this eastern border in Option B.
“We think we did our best with the square footage of the building, the number of parking spaces we had to keep the stadium where they are,” he said. “The bus traffic is similar to the first diagram. We have tried to divide this traffic so that the buses come from the south, your student parking comes from west to north, and you have your staff parking and the deposit of relatives in the east.
The new option, Option C, is an attempt to move the stadium to another site.
“It was our attempt to get the best of both worlds,” Lawton said. “If we had a blank page, it might be close to what we would have found. We really did our best to achieve as many of these goals as possible: increase your border, separate parking and car traffic. This relocates the stadium to the southwest. All three have advantages and disadvantages. We intend to provide options and consider the district to present in the future. »
Frank Pinciotti, Ruscilli Construction project manager, said Option A would be to build the new stadium first.
“In this way, the current use of the stadium would only be affected by one year,” he said. “So the teams would find other places to play. We have to build the new building at the same time as we build the new stadium. »
He said options A and B would affect the use of the stadium for about a year, while the high school would be without a stadium for more than four years under option C, and it would cost about 3.5 million. dollars more.
Terry Rippl, a 44-year-old resident, said he thought the district answered questions well with the information available. He said he knew a school was near his home when he moved to the neighborhood.
“When there’s a football game and there’s a touchdown, we hear a roar,” Rippl said. “It’s not a big deal.”
He said he was satisfied with the maximization of green spaces.
Southwind Drive resident Judy Brown said she was surprised the district offered two other options.
“My preference is the one that doesn’t move the stadium, B. It looks like they’ve considered the requests,” she said.
The day after the meeting, resident Ginny Evans said she spent quite a bit of time thinking about the three proposals.
“I was pleased to see that the district listened to neighbors’ concerns and presented two additional options for the footprint design,” she said. “Personally, with the information I currently have, I would rule out Option A because no one should be as directly negatively impacted by having a stadium so close to their property as the neighbors of Saverne Place would be.”
At first, Evans said, she thought Option B sounded good.
“But upon further inspection and discussion, I realized that separating the student parking lot from the school building was not a good option,” she said. “Students would need to walk around the stadium to enter the school building, and the student parking lot is not visible from the building. I don’t think that’s a good thing as far as overall school security and logistics are concerned.
Evans said Option C appears to be the best long-term option.
“It’s a shame there won’t be a football stadium for four years, but when I focus on the overall lifespan of the new building/campus and general academic and safety issues, I think “they take precedence over short term athletics. program interruptions. Option C is also more expensive due to the time it takes to complete the whole project. However, although I don’t want to see the district spending money on unnecessary things (like moving the one room schoolhouse to High Street) I think it would be wise to spend the extra money doing what will give us the most benefit per relation to the life of the new building.
Pinciotti said there weren’t a lot of details in the schematic design phase.
“The next phase is called design development, when they get into the details – the walls, the partitions, the finishes – and get more detailed, but not to the extent that we could actually put it on the street and bid,” Pinciotti said. “We do another check of the cost of the development drawings of the design. This is evaluated. When this is approved, there may be a cost reduction exercise to remove certain things or specify certain things that are less dear.
Pinciotti said the next step would be construction documents.
“These, when they’re done, we can go out on the street and bid on them with some contractors and work out the actual costs,” he said. “There are these checks and balances along the way to make sure we don’t design the Taj Mahal when we can’t afford it.
Deputy Superintendent Jill Elliott said Gahanna Lincoln High School has about 2,400 students and a replacement Lincoln High School at the current site could accommodate 2,800 students.
Elliott said high school staff provided input in a variety of ways throughout the design process and will be more engaged in the coming months as the floor plan is finalized and the discussion moves to the spaces. interiors.
She said the goal is to open the new high school for the 2024-25 school year.
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