BATH – Construction of the new Morse High School building is going smoothly and as planned according to Patrick Manuel, Regional School Unit 1 superintendent.
“The building footings and foundation walls are 95% complete,” said Manuel at Monday’s RSU 1 Board of Education meeting. “With the steel beams up it’s becoming clearer what the campus is going to look like. It’s quite exciting.”
“The project is still on schedule with no major concerns,” added Stephen August, chairman of the Board of Education.
Manuel said the building committee will next decide on cosmetic matters like interior paint colors, furniture choices, what the school’s sign on Congress Street will look like.
The next step in the building process is installing drywall, which the contractors expressed concerns over being able to find subcontractors to complete installing drywall within the tight time frame the district was giving for construction of the building, according to Alan Walton, a member of the Board of Education.
“We gave it to them in case they need the extra time, but we’re hoping they don’t need it,” Walton. “It’s amazing they can build a structure that big in two years.”
Once complete, the new school at the Wing Farm Business Park will be three-stories tall and nearly 186,000-square-feet. The school will have two gyms, two athletic fields, and an enhanced theater.
Constructed by New Hampshire-based Harvey Construction, the school will house Morse High School and the Bath Regional Career and Technical Center.
The state is funding $67.4 million of the $75.3 million cost; $7.2 million is to be paid locally through borrowing, with $700,000 earmarked from fundraising.
The project is expected to be completed in December 2020. Morse students will begin the 2020-21 school year in the existing Morse High School building, then move to the new building after Christmas break. Once students move to the new building, the old building will belong to Bath, but it is still unknown what the city will do with the building.
Bath held a public meeting in June to hear residents’ ideas on what they should do with the nearly century-old building. While ideas offered were diverse, popular themes centered around turning the building into a mixed-use space while preserving elements of the original structure such as the facade and the theater.
“Our next step is going to be drafting a request for proposal to go out sometime this fall using the feedback we received,” said Marc Meyers, Bath assistant city manager. “It’s going to be a public process.”
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