Mayor Bill Finch’s plan to build a much-needed new Harding High School on the Boston Avenue property owned by General Electric is making advances as city officials push for land agreements with the Fairfield-based corporate giant and Bridgeport Hospital officials seeking to expand operations on the current Harding property that would also serve as a health and medical sciences academy.
A new Harding is in the design phase and a timeline for completing a new school is September 2015, according to Superintendent of Schools Paul Vallas. The estimated cost is $78 million. The school will house 800 students in grades 9-12. The facility will include an athletic complex with full football and softball fields.
General Electric has spent the year dismantling the massive former arms and munitions factory that gave the city the name Arsenal of Democracy built by Remington Arms in 1915. The state’s largest city at roughly 17 square miles is land poor so the mayor is seeking to maximize the GE property for a new school while leveraging the Harding property for a jobs-creating hospital expansion.
Harding opened in 1925 and its age is showing. Roughly 1200 students and a staff of more than 100 are learning and teaching under a rotting infrastructure. Estimates to rebuild the school at its current location had been roughly $50 million. The city was challenged to relocate the students while building a new school on the existing site because of so little available land elsewhere in the city.
The Fairchild Wheeler Interdistrict Magnet High School currently under construction, set to open for the 2013-14 school year, is expected to absorb some students from Harding.
The GE site, however, solves the land problem. Discussions between GE officials, Mayor Bill Finch, municipal leaders and state legislative decision makers has the project and funding sources tracking in the right direction. Harding, bounded by Boston, Barnum and Central Avenues, is located a few blocks from the GE land.
Statements such as “rotting infrastructure” when describing the current Harding building exemplify why building experts should be present on the Board of Education instead of relying on the paid experts who are told what to say for self-interested people. If the Mayor were a “Green Mayor” he would have fought to reuse the GE building as they constituted substantial “embodied energy,” so much in natural and human resources invested in what was a tremendously strong building that could have been used for a lot of things for people with imagination and creativity. The cost of demo could have been rolled over into a re-use and best of all, could have kept these buildings on the tax rolls. A new school will be a tremendous cost to keep up such as the big buildings they built in BPT already. Our taxes keep going up. A creative and visionary green leadership model does not compartmentalize, doing token green things elsewhere while tearing down sound structures all over the place, taking up park land, etc. We really should have used the Remington site and Shot Tower on Helen Street for a new school/retail and railroad station. By the way, there was a petition probably signed by 2000 people who wanted to see the GE building saved. They were ignored. Tearing down perfectly sound, historical buildings is not the way to attract what Richard Florida wrote about in his book “The Creative Class” that Finch likes to reference often. Walls do not a school make!
I am green with envy that Bridgeporteur beat me to this post.
And you can be sure GE will sell the property to the city (and the state since CT pays 80%) and recoup the clean-up cost and make a little on the side.
Bill Finch is not building a new High School for the kids. It is for the political donors and very expensive PR campaign.
Every two weeks there will be a new PR hit about the new Harding High. The only recycling Mayor Greenjeans will be concerned about is recycling the Press Releases.
The Mayor has been aware in his pubic speeches of the relatively small size of Bridgeport relative to it’s the largest municipality in CT by population status.
The amount of property available for full payment of property taxes on a net grand listing seems to fail to increase in any significant manner (Reflect on Steel Point for decades), but whether necessary, attractive and/or urgent, the movement of taxpaying property to lower valuations continues through demolition and fires, and now there is active engagement to take that type of property and turn it off, except for substandard PILOT payments from a fiscally stressed State government.
Mayor Finch, what does this look like on your Excel spreadsheet? Show us the fiscal trend for troubled homeowners who already fund about 75% of Bridgeport’s taxes if you accelerate this trend. How is the court case regarding valuation of the trash to energy facility looking? What is the City being advised by its legal counsel? When it comes to land use, increasing budgets and poorly funded long-term obligations, the story can all be plotted on an Excel spreadsheet by Tom Sherwood and others. Then Adam Wood and Mayor Finch prepare a cover story to share as necessary. Is it so scary the “ignorant voters” cannot be told? Time will tell.
Although the GE buildings were pretty awesome, word is it would have been even more cost prohibitive to keep them. The biggest issue being all of the buildings were interconnected by an underground vault/basement. There were some other things that were stated as to why the buildings would not be viable. The difference between this property and the shot tower property probably boils down to GE could afford to pay for the demo of the property and the city will be lucky if DiNardo Enterprises ever pays them a cent of the money owed for taxes due. Let’s not even get into the clean-up on that site.
Intelligent community investment and rebuilding. Should lead to more investment and restoration on Mill Hill.
In response to TheSqueakyWheel. “Word has it that it would have been cost prohibitive to fix the old GE buildings.” Whose word?
When one of the initial reports came out about GE demolishing the buildings, one of the reasons given was “who would buy a bunch of inter-connected buildings.” Of course they chose to not put them on the market, and now we have what we have over there.
The city does need progress. Not sure mega-sized huge school buildings are good, though. Recent studies show medium size is better. The Achievement First schools seem to have the right size though lower level than high school.
Meanwhile speaking of progress, what’s the latest at Bijou Square in downtown Bridgeport? Épernay Bistro restaurant closed? Wonder why and under what circumstances.
Jim Callahan, I think your meds must have kicked in, remember we are talking about Bridgeport. “Restoration,” what a great concept but could it happen here? No …
All the cranks are at it again. Callahan is correct. This is an intelligent use. What solution does Reaper and Mackey and Mr. Negative Bob Walsh have for Harding? All the cranks led by Walsh never have a solution. Just the same rabid frothing. Blech!
The only cranks here are people like you who cheer Finch while he destroys this city.
*** We may not always agree, but the truth sometimes seems to hurt the Finch Admin, which is known for twisting and reshaping words to suit their agenda, no? ***
*** I remember reading something in the past on OIB concerning the development management at GE and its demolition phases which had Ruben Felipe from the Mayor’s office overseeing the project. So far it appears as though they are ahead of schedule and Ruben seems to be doing a bang-up job moving this project forward! Let’s hope Bpt does see a new high school at that site in the near future. I’m on the outside looking in but it looks like Ruben is doing a good job so far, no? *** Giving Credit Where Credit’s Due, If In Fact True? ***
Bang-up job of what, destroying what is left of Bpt’s tax base?
Of course Ruben and the City are doing a good job tearing things down. That’s all they know how to do. “Wrecking-ball Bill” coming your way!
*** When it comes to anything concerning education (high school) etc. in the city of Bpt, is it not wise to have and not need rather than need and not have? *** Build It And They Will Come! ***
*** It’s a bit difficult for some to see anything positive in a sea of so much negative. That’s why we must not let our personal feelings about the past cloud our vision towards progress in the future! Harding High must be rebuilt, replaced, etc. and the GE property will be a great site that happens to be in the same neighborhood as the old Harding, no? *** Working With What You Got! ***
This new facility might slow the number of kids who drop out by turning the existing shithole into an environment conducive to learning. Seats in classrooms is a formidable metric. Poverty, you see, is conquered by the rapier of education.