The newest redevelopment project underway in the city of New Brunswick is not residential or commercial. Instead, it provides something more relevant to its younger residents - a new high school.
The new 407,000 square foot facility is planned to occupy a 26-acre site located off of Route 27 and will take the place of the current New Brunswick High School, which is located on Livingston Avenue. The current facility will be then be converted into a middle school for the district. Once finished, the new high school will consolidate three current programs into one central location, accommodating 2,000 students.
The new high school comes with an estimated price tag of $187.4 million and has drawn much public criticism for the high cost.
"It's pretty much just a basic no-frills high school at this point," said Larry Hanover, a spokesman for New Jersey Schools Construction Corporation. "The cost of construction has gone up 20 percent regionally since 2002, so that's a big part of it. Between the land acquisition, demolition and soil remediation on the site, that total alone reaches almost $30 million, which is unusually expensive."
The New Brunswick Development Corporation - also known as Devco - has been named the developer of the project and is working in cooperation with the SCC. Devco President Christopher J. Paladino said the plan for the proposed facility is not extravagant.
"Most of the plan is nothing that you wouldn't see at most suburban high schools," he said. "The scale is simply larger because the population is growing. We had to acquire 26 acres, and that's just what it costs to build a school today."
Paladino added, "It's a bit ironic. New Brunswick is one of the few urban areas in New Jersey where our school-age population is booming."
The total price estimate for the new facility is broken down into approximately $129 million in construction costs, $22 million in furniture, equipment and developers' fees, $26 million for land acquisition and $7 million for design costs. Another $4 million will be required to relocate the major tenant on the current site, Jersey Precast Corporation.
Included in the plan for the new facility are 33 standard classrooms, 10 science labs, 18 resource classrooms, eight self-contained special education classrooms, six art rooms and three music rooms. In addition, the new high school will contain an auditorium, cafeteria, gymnasium, media center, health center, day care facility and various athletic fields.
"It is a very big school, and the SCC hasn't yet built a school for more than 1,200 students," Hanover said. "This new facility will accommodate 2,000 students. So because of that, more space is needed and that means more cost."
"The new school plan, by comparison, is not more expensive than the other schools being built by the SCC," Paladino said. "On a per student or per square foot basis, this project fits within their guidelines."
The new high school is one of six demonstration projects originally provided for under the legislation known as the Educational Facilities Construction and Financing Act, which allows municipalities to apply for grants from the SCC in order to develop school facilities.
"The legislation allocated over $6 billion to cover educational construction costs in the state," Hanover said. "New Brunswick applied for one of the demonstration projects and was approved in 2004."
The ball has begun to roll on the project, with a large amount of structural steel for the facility ordered last week. Paladino said demolition and site remediation would be occurring throughout the summer, with "full-blown construction" in progress by the end of the year. Completion of the facility is anticipated for 2010.
Still, the educational nature of the project sets it apart.
"I've been here in New Brunswick for 13 years, and for 10 of them, a new high school has been a priority," he said. "This is certainly one of the more rewarding projects we've been able to work on."
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