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Council takes first step towards building a new Boston Arts Academy
By adamg on Wed, 11/29/2017 - 1:46pm
Architect's rendering of new BAA.
The Boston City Council today unanimously backed a plan to tear down the current Boston Arts Academy on Ipswich Street in the Fenway and replace it with a $124.8-million school that will feature actual practice space for the school's music and dance students and where teachers will no longer have to use restrooms as storage spaces.
The new building will also let the school expand enrollment from 440 to 500 students.
Because the proposal could require borrowing, the council has to take a second vote on the proposal at a later date.
Councilor Mark Ciommo (Allston/Brighton) said the city will seek reimbursement from the state for the project - which could cover up to 65% of the cost. Councilor Frank Baker (Dorchester) praised the Walsh administration, noting that under the Menino administration, the city never sought reimbursement from the state for such projects.
Councilor Josh Zakim, who represents the Fenway, said the school, which requires prospective students to audtion, has "always had great teachers, it's alway's had great student, it's world class," despite being located in a decaying former postal-service warehouse.
In recent years, city officials have repeatedly tried and failed to find a new location for the school.
New school presentation and renderings (4.2M PDF).
More details on what's wrong with the building.
Neighborhoods:
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Comments
How about take that money
And build a trade school. You know where kids can actually learn a skill that will pay the bills.
How about no?
One of the last high schools the city built was Madison Park. Rather than replicating it, BPS should figure out how to make it actually work for the kids. That's different from BAA, which doesn't even have an adequate building.
One of the "trades" they
One of the "trades" they teach at vocational school is graphic design and photography. So a school centered on arts where photography and other art trades is taught is really just an arts trade school. I am lucky to have an actual skill as a graphic designer. Businesses are realizing they need to have good design to be successful and these are great skills for our kids to be learning for the future! Arts tend to get last dibs on funding and physical resources. Psyched for these BAA students!!
So because BPS' last (and
So because BPS' last (and ONLY) vocational school is a disaster, there isn't a desperate need for more vocational education opportunities? Or MP's struggles somehow suggest arts should be prioritized over trade?
Trying to understand you logic here. Yes, BAA is in a shit building, but the city also needs trade workers (more STEM, too, for that matter). These things are not mutually exclusive.
When the next recession comes, we will still need mechanics, probably not so much the dancers. Just sayin...
Boston doesn't need a second voke building
It needs to fix the programs in the one it already has.
STEM? The city tore down the old Dearborn school to put up a brand-new STEM academy.
For an in-district charter
For an in-district charter school, and over the opposition of the entire neighborhood.
Entire neighborhood?
Um, no. The project was born out of the neighborhood.
Both/And, not Either/Or
That's ridiculous and small-minded. We need more dancers and artists and musicians, not fewer. In a world where so many people are starving, where children are dying as they wait in refugee camps or being killed because they don't practice the "right" religion, where we are destroying the environment with abandon, where wealth is concentrated in so few hands, where many of our elected officials have no ethics---maybe that's a world where we need to have our spirits lifted by artists of all kinds, rather than be overcome by the darkness all around us. We need both mechanics and dancers.
How will building a new building
Magically make competent vocational education happen? They already built one, and it didn't.
On the other hand, Boston Arts Academy already provides a competent arts high school. They just need a proper building to do it in.
Vocational training
Starts in middle school. Traditionally all middle schools throughout the City had "shops". Some schools had carpentry, others had sheet metal etc. Throw kids into a vocational high school without previous exposure is a disaster which Madison Park has always been. They had state of the art vocational shops which rivaled any school in MA and it didn't help.
This actually sounds like a decent idea
But it should have been coupled with a list of 3-4 other schools they plan to close to help the state pay for it.
Costs!
While I applaud a new school, especially with a focus on the arts, but is anyone else gobsmacked that it will cost $125M to build a school for 500 students? If the city already owns the land, is it all just for planning, demo and construction?
$125M
Is the entire project budget (including all anticipated additional services and contingencies), not the construction cost.
State funding
Comes from sales tax. Rest comes from the City.
The arts ARE a trade
The arts ARE a trade. Performing artists bring people into the city to pay for shows (etc.), and visual artists do commercial as well as freelance art work. Arts students who go into other lines of work after graduation bring with them creative intensity and capacity for hard work that employers put to good use. So please don't knock an arts school as something less than schools that serve other vocations. To be a great city Boston needs a great arts school that serves students of all types.
Waste of money
In less than ten years there will be very few families and kids in the City. Spend the money on affordable housing.
Yeah
That makes sense.
Who would be living in this affordable housing again? Not families and kids?
Wait, wait, wait Mr. Baker
The Menino administration definitely got state funding for school renovations. That's why they found themselves in need of a tenant for the Hyde Park Educational Complex when they closed whatever high school was located there (because it was too tough to just call it "Hyde Park High School.") If they mothballed a school they just rehabbed, the state would have asked for their money back. Therefore, a high school named for Mission Hill is located there.
I mean, I love to knock the practically beautified predecessor to Walsh, but he did right on that. Well, except for rehabbing a school then trying to close it, but the funding thing was right.
Funny, how the Mayor
can find the money for a new art school (cause, you know, artists will save the world)* but the $80 million project to replace the Long Island bridge (that was shelved), well:
https://commonwealthmagazine.org/politics/boston-abandons-long-island-br...
*I love the arts and think they are indeed important and needed. However, priorities.
Never mind the arts
Let's forget for a moment that this is an arts-oriented school, because people keep talking like this is some adult-ed thing that's nice for yuppies, but useless for everybody else.
This is an actual BPS high school, with 440 teen-aged students from across the city going to class every day in a crappy building that should have been replaced years ago (a few years ago, I wrote about a student there who couldn't get to her classes because she'd broken her leg or something, and the elevator was broken, and had been broken for a long time).
These kids deserve a decent school building. And in a city full of BPS haters, I would think we'd want to help one of the few high schools with a good record of turning out well educated graduates.
As for Long Island, in a city being flooded with new revenue from new construction, there's no reason we can't do both - especially since the state will likely cover a large part of the new school. Why we're not is another matter, and a question for the mayor, but I'm not sure why people are so insistent in forcing several hundred kids to stay in a crappy building.
A agree with you, Adam.
There is no reason why we can't do both. But when it appears that we can only do one, at least at this point, and the other one is not even in the picture, it is unfortunate, at least to me, that the care of the homeless ranks lower than this project in the Walsh Administration's eyes. That was the only point I was trying to make.
I don't think any students, arts-oriented or otherwise, should have to go to school in a crappy building. That we can agree on.
There's a reason
First, as noted, I agree this new school is a good idea.
HOWEVER, if you look at the budget, about every new dollar in property tax is getting eaten by education, fixed costs, especially pensions and debt service which are two of the fastest growing expenses in the city. Fix the bridge, where does it come from? We've already obliterated most departments and public safety is fairly flat in staffing and budget as a percent of the budget even after adding 75-100k residents.
The only place left to take it from is schools.
I’ll give you two reasons
1. The state will pony up money for this. If the state was willing to cover half the cost of a bridge to Long Island, without even needing the approval of the General Court, the bridge would be under construction now. Except that
2. The City of Quincy will never allow the bridge to be rebuilt. Evidence? See the last 10 or so years of the Menino administration. That bridge didn’t suddenly go bad. Quincy created the crisis. They have no desire to rectify the situation.
What the new school would look like
I've added a rendering to the original post, and a link to a presentation that has more details and renderings.
Fame
Every time I walk by the current building (typically on my way home from the clubs), I hear the theme song to Fame in my head. It's the same concept of a school (a high school focusing on the arts)
Went to school here in the 80s
When it was Latin Academy. It was recently the post office warehouse and a real dump. The arts kids deserve better.
However, I’d question why borrowing needs to be done.
This is prime real estate. Build a mid size tower and put the school on the bottom. Lease the rest for 25-100 Years to the developer to finance it. Or just put retail on the bottom and the school above it.
Think outside the box for this parcel. Even sell it and rehab another school for BAA.
I’m not an RE guy but is this crazy?
That is an excellent idea.
That is an excellent idea.
It would ensure the following:
1. it will be built fast
2. it will be built cheaper
3. it will be built well
4. the kids will make good neighbors because they won't be around after work and on the weekends.
Other than that they should sell the land and get enough money in the sale to lay the foundation for the school or maybe lease the land for 99 years to the developer with the money going to BPS.
Highest and best use and a small building there among the giant buildings going up around it doesn't make the highest and best use of the space.
Central location
If the school is to pull kids from all over the city it needs a central location. You can’t just tuck it away out in West Roxbury or hide it down in Dorchester.
Though it seems that’s what they plan to do for however long it takes to finish the new building.
Height limits
It's next to Fenway.
Henry doesnt want anyone getting free box seats and he owns this town - or at least the politicians because he owns the Globe.
They sell this concept by claiming historic preservation around the ballpark. Maybe not valid, but that's why all the development is on the far side of Boylston or further west.
Do these limits apply...
...to this proposed new priced-beyond-local-pockets hotel that would replace the gas station on Boylston? Thinking not somehow. Funny how that works.
8 stories
And far enough away that you won't be able to see into the ballpark. That's the key.
I had the same thought
They have already let the zoning allow for tall buildings on Boylston.
As Adam said, the City does have the capacity to do more than one thing at a time. If we can give the IRS a million in fines out of a slush fund, we are well on the way to building a new school if we just shake out the couches a bit.
Madison Park is structurally a fine building. There is no need to build a new trade school. We just need more hands on guidance and responsibility from our Mayor who comes from the trades.
Madison is not a "strucurally
Madison is not a "strucurally fine building", nor is the rest of the complex. If you want to see inequities, remember that the other school located there is one of our exam schools, the O'Bryant, whose student body actually closely mirrors the city's demographics.
It was built on the cheap to last 30 years and is about 15 years past its expiration date. There's no insulation, it leaks, the windows either don't open or close, the air conditioning and/or heat don't work properly, it's not weather tight and there's a continual rodent and insect infiltration problem. Also, it was built on a brownfield.
None of which means BAA students should continue to suffer a shoddy building.
Others disagree
Building's only 40 years old.
http://www.buildbps.org/profiles/116
Fantastic!!
This is already a level one high school, according to the state, which makes it one of the best high schools in the state. MA is #1 in education in the US so this is one of the best high schools in the country. If you've ever seen one of their performances or sat in on their classes you can easily what a wonderful school this is. It's about time they got a real building.
Yes.
My first thought, too, was given the prime location of this school, the new building should have a commercial component to offset costs.
The Boston Arts Academy is
The Boston Arts Academy is currently Boston’s only high school that focuses on the arts. This proposed change is something that will help increase enrollment and give the building an update!