The Portland Design Commission on Thursday got a second look at plans to replace Ida B. Wells-Barnett High School with an approximately 291,000-square-foot building on the site’s south side.

The new building is planned as part of an effort to modernize the campus, at 1151 S.W. Vermont St.

The project was first presented to the Design Commission in September 2024. The biggest change from then is that the track-and-field element, previously oriented north to south, is now proposed to remain where it is due to budget constraints.

The project is valued at $349 million, according to Portland Permitting & Development. Bora Architecture & Interiors designed the project for Portland Public Schools. The project team also includes KPFF (civil and structural engineering), Rivero Design (civil engineering), NBZ Consulting Engineers (structural engineering), and Walker Macy (landscape architecture).

The existing school will remain operational during construction, because it sits upon a hill away from the buildable area.

The new school will include a theater, band and choir rooms, a cafeteria and commons, and a media center as well as classrooms and science labs, art rooms, shop spaces, a variety of specialized learning environments and administrative offices. A community health clinic may be included in the project if a service provider can be identified, the applicant’s narrative states.

Planned site improvements include a new track and field with grandstand and support buildings, new baseball, softball and soccer fields with associated site structures, new tennis courts, reconfigured parking areas, and new pedestrian pathways. The existing swimming pool, run by Portland Parks & Recreation, will remain. Facilities associated with Rieke Elementary School will also remain.

The main entrance would be on the building’s east side. Another entrance on the south side would lead to a potential health clinic. Commissioner Thomas Eldridge said the main entry does not strike him as such. Commissioners suggested adding more signage to indicate the main entry.

The site plan is extremely constrained in creating a direct north-south link by the existing locations of the track and field and pool, which push the north-south connection significantly eastward. A north-south path is thus proposed east of the pool, the city staff report states.

“The north-south connection is a really important connector,” said Tanya Paglia, a city planner for Portland Permitting & Development.

Commissioners agreed that the path should be wide. They asked the team to provide more details at the next design advice request (DAR) hearing.

Building materials and composition are still being decided, but thin brick tile in an alternating pattern is being considered as the primary cladding. Commissioners agreed that the color of the brick may be too dark, acknowledging that the shade is popular right now but may not be in the future.

“I think the kind of pathway through the building from the entry to the commons is so beautiful with the use of wood on the inside,” Commissioner Sarah Vaz said. “I love the general concept of having bark on the outside, wood on the inside. It’s just not feeling very bark-like right now.”

Vaz suggested the project team work with the school’s design advisory group and community members to determine the color of the brick, if the team hasn’t already.

Commissioner Zari Santner asked the project team to address bus and parent drop-off locations, including near the grandstand, before the next DAR hearing.

A third DAR hearing will take place on Feb. 19, 2026. The project will require a Type III conditional use review and a Type III design review. The design team plans to submit a design review application in March.

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In downtown Beaverton, the rise of a three-story, 300,500-square-foot high school is hard to miss.

Structures are taking shape, and Skanska USA Building managers and district officials said the new Beaverton High School is scheduled to open in August 2026. The project is expected to cost $253 million (as budgeted) including soft costs, with $221 million of that for direct construction.

The new school is next to the existing one, portions of which date to 1916. At some locations, the new structure is as near as 14 feet to the existing one.

Skanska is serving as the construction manager/general contractor for the project designed by Portland’s BRIC Architecture. About 220 workers labor on site each day.

“Things are clipping right along and looking good for opening next fall,” said Troy Boardman, senior superintendent for Skanska.

The new Beaverton High School will have three stories to host about 1,500 students. Given a limited footprint, designers had no choice but to go vertical.

“We had to make it three stories to meet the capacity requirements,” said Jeffrey Hamman, senior project manager for Beaverton School District.

The project is funded by a 2022 bond approved by voters. Of Beaverton School District’s 54 schools, the high school was most in need of an update, officials said, along with Raleigh Hills Elementary, which is also being rebuilt. Both schools are considered seismically vulnerable.

“A community priority was having a building that’s resilient,” said Aaron Boyle, facilities division manager for Beaverton School District.

Beaverton High is being built to Risk Category IV standards under the International Building Code, meaning it’s designed to be functional immediately after an earthquake.

Essentially, there will be two separate buildings. A seismic joint will allow the structures to move in an earthquake, sliding in a 16-inch gap. Portions of the buildings also will use SidePlate connection systems for resiliency.

Only the cafeteria, built in 2004, will be retained from the existing school. The cafeteria represents the district’s efforts to construct the new high school for “future readiness.” The cafeteria structure could be demolished in years to come in favor of a three-story building if growth drives enrollment well above today’s levels.

“We hope the way that we’ve constructed (the school) allows that flexibility,” Boyle said.

For today’s students, the new Beaverton High will feature 36 general education classrooms, eight science classrooms located in their own wing, three special-education classrooms, four career-and-technical education classrooms and two CTE labs. One classroom will be dedicated for three-dimensional art.

A two-story flex space will be available for a variety of uses. The theater will be wired for modern video and audio. A clinic operated by Virginia Garcia will provide health services to any student within the district.

A gym will have three full courts, an elevated one-eighth-mile track and capacity for 3,000 people to attend events. The gym will be framed by concrete panels that were formed on-site in pouring beds before being tilted up during a weekend with the help of a crane. Each panel weighs 220,000 pounds, Boardman said.

The new school frames a central, 15,500-square-foot courtyard. Walker Macy is the landscape architect for the project.

School entrances and exits will be strictly controlled, district officials said. The new school has no entrances along Southwest Farmington Road, a major thoroughfare.

The project team has had to work around Beaverton High’s busy events schedule while ensuring school staff and students are kept apart from construction activities.

“That has been the biggest challenge,” said Trevor Wyckoff, a Skanska executive vice president. “We’re only a few feet from the existing Beaverton High School during construction.”

Construction has gone smoothly, Skanska officials said. Electrical and mechanical equipment proved to be the most difficult materials to procure, but they were ordered early enough so that no delay resulted, Wyckoff said.

The impact of President Donald Trump’s tariffs program has been minimal to date, Wyckoff said.

Major subcontractors contributing to the Beaverton High project include Apollo Mechanical Contractors, Prairie Electric, REFA Erectors, Goodfellow Bros. and Anning-Johnson Co.

Correction: In an earlier version of this article, Jeffrey Hamman’s name was misspelled. Also, he is senior project manager for the Beaverton School District, not Skanska.

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