TOPSHAM

School Administrative District 75’s architect is recommending a new high school be built at the existing Mt. Ararat High School site, rather than renovating the school at an even higher estimated cost.

Portland architect firm PDT Architects made the recommendation Wednesday night during a meeting of the SAD 75 school board’s building committee.

PDT will finalize its report by next week and forward it to the Maine Department of Education for review.

The committee made no decisions Wednesday and is scheduled to meet again Sept. 16.

After seeking state funds for a construction project for many years, the district finally received a green light from the DOE in 2014.

Superintendent Brad Smith said Wednesday that the question of whether to renovate the 40-year-old high school or build a new one was foremost on the minds of many in the district.

“We did the engineering analysis and we did the cost estimates and it’s about $2.3 million cheaper to do new construction than to do renovation,” said Lyndon Keck of PDT.

PDT also recommends SAD 75 stay with the current site for its construction project. Keck said it will be a challenging site on which to work, “but we think we can end up with a pretty fabulous design whether we do renovation or new.”

He shared what he called “premium” costs involved in renovations making it the more expensive option, starting with challenges to the existing high school.

“This building has had structural problems from the very first day … and there has been remediation work done in the building already in terms of structure upgrades to the building,” Keck said, adding that there are still some areas of the building that would need work.

Mt. Ararat High School is an unusual building. At 226 feet wide and 278 feet long, it is much wider than the average school building, so there isn’t enough “perimeter” for every room to get a window and natural sunlight and natural ventilation. This makes it difficult to renovate, Keck said.

In order to renovate the school, said Keck, the district would need to find somewhere to place staff and 750 students for two years. It would cost about $2.6 million to house students and staff in portables or to rent other facilities.

Leasing portables alone would cost the district $1.3 million or more.

In addition to building a new school, Keck is recommending building a new gymnasium.

“It’s been suggested that the (existing gym) would be a good candidate as a second gym or a field house, and I think that’s a good idea,” Keck said. He wouldn’t recommend asking to state for funding to renovate the gym.

The gym was a topic that generated a lot of discussion on Wednesday, and more discussion is likely coming regarding the future of the existing gym.

A series of public meetings on the Mt. Ararat project will be held throughout September.

dmoore@timesrecord.com