New plan for MHS meets school’s needs, lessens impact on community

By Matthew Stewart
of The Daily Times Staff

After nearly four years of gathering input, the architects and contractor have come up with a multiphase plan for Maryville High School to meet the school’s needs and minimize the impact on the community.

“The architects have done a really good job of listening through the whole process,” said Maryville City Schools Director Stephanie Thompson, who noted they reduced the number of land acquisitions needed for the plan and lessened the impact on the community.

The current plan has made “the (least) impact on the community we’ve seen,” school board Vice Chairman Doug Jenkins said.

Johnson Architecture’s Daryl Johnson said the plan is the “culmination of months of work. We’ve spent numerous hours at the school looking at (architectural) drawings.” The firm’s crew has crawled through every room of the school and digitally documented it.

The Maryville City Council gave the school system $35 million to work on eight schools. Contractor Lawler-Wood’s Executive Vice President Barry Brooke said they have “got a pretty good game plan. (However), currently, we’re not far enough along (in the process) to give definitive answers,” Brooke said.

The plan still needs to be approved by the school board. The architects said the full extent of what they can accomplish in the plan’s first phase will hinge on other projects in the works.

The high school’s current plan would allow it to expand within the boundaries of the current block created by Cunningham Street, Lawrence Avenue, West Broadway Avenue and South Cedar Street.

The school would have a 2,200 student capacity and, based on current growth projections, would accommodate students until 2021. The planned school would be 400,000 square feet, Brooke said. The plan includes a new commons area, gym, library, locker rooms, auditorium, and music and drama departments.

Classroom space is needed immediately and will be addressed in phase I, project manager Kristin Grove said. Lawler-Wood’s employees are currently in the process of conducting geotechnical, environmental and traffic studies for phase I, Brooke said. Phase I is scheduled to be finished in time for use in fall 2010, Grove said.
Additional parking has not been addressed in the plan, Grove said.

Parking is the “single biggest challenge (and has) the largest impact on the community,” Johnson said. “There are a number of ways to solve it; we’re hopeful we can find a way to do it. We’re trying not to create large parking lots and we’re trying to address the needs. The community has a say in how we can accomplish it,” he said. “The rest of it is falling into place; we’re doing the best we can,” Johnson said.

Everyone has done a wonderful job leading Maryville City Schools through the entire process, Thompson said. They’ve included the high school staff, school board members and central office in their decisions, she said.