Students of Roosevelt High School in North Portland returned from their winter break last month to a handful of newly-opened spaces at the school, which is undergoing a $92 million renovation and modernization.

Portions of the project’s first phase, which includes all new construction and the renovation of the former auditorium building, were opened before the beginning of the school year last September. Last month, completion of Phase 1B was marked with the opening of a new theater, a smaller black box theater and classroom space, a commons/cafeteria and new kitchen, a writing center, and band room.

Contractor Lease Crutcher Lewis is currently working on the second phase of the Bassetti Architecture-designed project, which includes the renovation of the 96-year-old main building and a former cafeteria and theater/band building.

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Over the first two weeks of the 2016-17 academic year, administrators at Roosevelt High School reportedly dealt with only one disciplinary incident. Usually, staffers address many, many more, according to Vice Principal Daniel Malone, who thinks he knows what’s behind such a sudden and significant behavioral shift.

“This is a different kind of space,” he said. “Maybe they’re asking themselves, ‘Does this feel like a place to work or a place to play?’”

Crews scrambled night and day to turn over the first construction phase of the $92 million renovation and modernization effort at Roosevelt – one of four large projects funded by the 2012 Portland Public Schools bond. As the second phase gets out of the gate, Roosevelt is very much still a construction site, but district officials maintain that’s not a bad thing.

Visible changes

In August, Roosevelt students returned to a completely different facility. Gone are the dark and dingy pink-tiled restrooms, and “vermin,” to use Malone’s term.

New construction created a two-court main gymnasium, an auxiliary gym, a weight room, 33 general education classrooms, plus several career-technical classrooms for industrial arts/construction courses, a STEM/robotics laboratory and a writing/digital media publishing center. The new facilities will house three new community program spaces.

Renovation work is complete on the former auditorium building, which will now serve as the new media center / library with many new classrooms below. In just a few months, additional new facilities will open. These include the commons/cafeteria, band room, theater and “black box” theater classroom.

But the contractor, Lease Crutcher Lewis, isn’t quite ready to hand over certain areas, so the existing cafeteria wing will continue to house theater and band programs. The performing arts and commons wing, originally scheduled to open in the fall, now won’t do so until winter.

Another reason for the jockeying is tied to the 135-foot-high boom crane needed to renovate parts of the 95-year-old building. The iconic clock tower has limited options for positioning the machine, which is needed to convey materials for the renovation. The district will postpone opening areas under the crane’s swing radius – the new cafeteria and commons area, as well as the band room.

School first

With the school year under way and half of the project finished, Lease Crutcher Lewis crews are at work on the distinctive U-shaped original building.

Adding to an old building is always a challenge, PPS‘ Chief of Modernization Jerry Vincent said. Plus, with 900 high school students, teachers and staff, and upwards of 250 construction workers across 202,000 square feet, the site is rather constrained.

“It’s a very tight site,” Vincent said. “Plus there’s kids.”

The decision to keep the school occupied was a financial one, Vincent said. Acquiring portable classrooms or other swing space would have cost the district between $5 million and $6 million. The agreement is for the project to be completed in two years, but the team was under the gun to complete 65 percent of the project within one year. To finish within that demanding time frame, crews worked six days a week, with a swing-shift outfit performing work on space otherwise used for school activities. Crews even worked seven days a week in June and July.

There’s one choke point near the back of the school where builders and students cross paths. A guard stands there most hours of the day, allowing students to pass during their six-minute breaks between classes.

“It’s a school site first, and a construction site second,” Vincent said. “A key component of the project is that operations have to stay up and running for the school and safety is maintained and we do construction around that. So it’s not like they’re on our site – We’re on their site.”

Remnants of the past

Roosevelt is one of two high schools now under construction via money from the 2012 bond; the other is Franklin. Construction also is taking place at Faubion School, a K-8 facility. The fourth major bond-funded project is an update of Grant High School; it’s now being designed.

Despite the years of planning involved, old buildings like those at Roosevelt contain mysteries that keep contractors on their toes.

“When you can expose the undercarriage of your building, you start to see what your template is and if it actually matches the drawings,” Vincent said. “One of the biggest unforeseens we’ve had is all the changes over 80-plus years weren’t recorded, so we’re running into a lot of surprises in here.”

Crews have found unreinforced masonry (URM) as they go about adding shear walls and tying them in. As written into the bond language, seismic remediation is a major element of work all around the district. URM walls discovered in Roosevelt aren’t supposed to be load-bearing, but many of them appear to have been holding something up.

As crews tackle demolition, they are pulling tile and removing windows for cleaning. Lead pipes and lead fixtures are coming out by the Dumpster-full, and other environmental and health hazards are being addressed. Asbestos is a major concern, in part because it’s found in so many historic materials like magnesite, which was used in the original construction and in some cases was covered with three levels of overlays.

“It’s another of those seemed-like-a-good-idea-at-the-time materials,” said David Mayne, communication manager for the bond program.

On a tour of the construction site, Vincent was pleased to see it being used as a school – i.e., kids studying, posters adorning the walls.

“I love to (see them) taking ownership of it,” he said.

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