The Waynflete School in Portland’s historic West End plans to demolish its gymnasium and build an improved athletics and wellness facility on the same site to accommodate its growing student body and an expanded curricular interest in health and wellness.

The private prep school is currently workshopping plans for the $15 million structure with the city’s historic preservation board.

School officials say the 1970s gymnasium off of Spring and Fletcher streets is too small for today’s student population of about 560 students, and has structural and accessibility issues. Waynflete began plans to renovate parts of the campus, including the gym, more than a decade ago.

It redid the lower school building for K- 5 students in 2016 and preemptively applied for permits to renovate the athletic center, but those lapsed years ago and the pandemic further delayed the project, according to Head of School Geoffrey Wagg.

The new gym should have a similar footprint to the old one, Wagg said, but a better layout will allow for more practice space and accommodate community gatherings. It will also connect to the lower school via an underground tunnel, which is already partially constructed.

The school is still in the early stages of the permitting process and although the building itself isn’t historic, because the school is in the West End Historic District, that means first working through plans with the Historic Preservation Board.

“We’re in an urban environment that also has a history to it, and we’re subject to the historic preservation,” Wagg said. “So that requires us to design facilities that are going to blend from a character perspective and design perspective with the neighborhood. You don’t want things that are going to look wildly out of place in the middle of a historic district.”

Architects for the project presented current plans to the preservation board Wednesday evening. Board members provided feedback on the exterior of the building, from brick color to corrugated metal choice to height. They suggested adding windows in a stairway visible from the road to make the building friendlier to the neighborhood. Wagg said the architects will take that into account, and said the board’s suggestions years ago on the lower school renovation were helpful to the design process.

“That’s the exact kind of feedback you want to have,” he said.

A rendering of the proposed athletic and wellness facility at Waynflete School in Portland’s West End seen via Spring Street. Courtesy Simons Architects 

The city planning board will vote on approving a site plan for the gym later this month, and the school will seek approval for the building permit further on in the process, Wagg said.

He said demolition of the current gym should happen some time in either April or June, during a school break. The construction process will take about 18 months, and Wagg said Waynflete is hoping to lose just one season of basketball.

But the new building won’t just host athletics. After the project was delayed by the pandemic, Wagg said, the school had the opportunity to review and adjust plans. That led to adding health and wellness classrooms to the facility.

“We’ve always taught health and wellness classes, but they sort of get mixed about all over campus, they don’t really have a home,” he said.  “And with the need for that kind of class more now than ever before, we were able in this new design to create an entire floor that is just devoted to health and wellness aspects of the program.”

A rendering of the inside of the proposed athletic and wellness facility at Waynflete School in Portland’s West End. Courtesy Simons Architects 

Throughout the process, Wagg said Waynflete has been in contact with nearby residents. The school has participated in two neighborhood meetings, one self-orchestrated meeting in the summer and one required by the city last month, which he said had about 15 attendees. He said community feedback at both was generally helpful and positive.

Public commenters at Wednesday’s historic preservation meeting thanked Waynflete for its proactivity in incorporating neighborhood feedback in the design following the earlier meetings. The building is two stories, but tiered so that from the Fletcher Street level, it doesn’t look larger than surrounding structures.

“This design, particularly on the Fletcher Street elevation, is informed by the prior design and the feedback of neighbors, who … were very much eager not to have a repeat of what I’ll call the ‘spaceship elevation’ of the current building, which is very dramatic and out of context,” Anne Pringle, president of the Western Promenade Neighborhood Association, said, adding that the school had been amenable to neighbor feedback in its latest design.