Centennial High School Renovation

Remodel Improves Overall Function of School

By Dawn Weinberger

Once the renovation of Centennial High School is complete in December, the school will have new library, media center, counseling and administration offices, student commons area, auditorium, music facilities, computer labs, locker rooms, restrooms, landscaping and an enhanced swimming pool. Rendering by LSW Architects

A high school is an action-packed place with classes, traffic, extracurricular activities and special events.

Add a $20 million renovation project to the normal hustle and bustle, and the school becomes a joint educational institution/construction site.

Such is life at Centennial High School in Gresham, Ore., where an extensive renovation project began in June to bring the 43-year-old building structurally, technologically and aesthetically up-to-date.

The project is scheduled for completion in December.

Josh Ring, project engineer of Portland, Ore.-based Emerick Construction, the project's general contractor, said there's only one way for a team of contractors to work around a bunch of teen-agers: carefully.

"(Our work) is isolated from where the kids are, so they don't have access," Ring said. "Safety is our No. 1 priority."

Areas where work is in progress have been fenced off, and only certain areas of school property have been designated for deliveries. Also, to make certain construction noise does not disturb classes, much of the work is done after school hours during a 3 p.m. to 2 a.m. night shift.

Emerick won the contract to remodel Centennial (which has had a total of eight remodels over the years, though none this extensive) through the construction manager/general contractor method. This method allowed Emerick to get on board early in the design process and work closely with the team at LSW Architects, also based in Portland.

"It would have been very difficult (with the more traditional hard-bid process) because of the complexity of the schedule, the number of phases and the timeline," Ring said. "We were able to incorporate the construction schedule into the design of the building."

In an ideal situation, students and staff would temporarily relocate to another building during the renovation process. However, in this case, the Centennial School District did not have access to another building large enough to handle the school's population, and working only during school breaks and summer vacations was not feasible because the project would take several years to complete.

Crews erect steel for the school's new media center. To ensure noise does not disturb classes, much of the project's construction is done after school hours during a 3 p.m. to 2 a.m. night shift. Photo courtesy of Emerick

Though parts of the original structure will remain intact, Centennial will essentially become a new school. In addition to 10 new classrooms, there will be a new library, media center, counseling and administration offices, student commons area, auditorium, music facilities, computer labs, locker rooms, restrooms, landscaping and an enhanced swimming pool.

The pool will have its own entrance (it is currently accessed through an alley that runs between the building and a fenced-off field), as well as a new lobby and locker rooms.

The improved school will also feature a fire sprinkler system, which it currently lacks, as well as a new fire alarm system.

Emerick and its team of subcontractors are working on some seismic upgrades, although Ring said much of the school is already seismically adequate.

"We're also using the latest and greatest HVAC mechanical control system, called Direct Digital Control," he added. This system allows close monitoring of the school's HVAC system through the Internet, even when nobody is onsite."

If the school's air conditioning doesn't automatically kick in, for example, school maintenance staff can simply log on (with a password) and activate it manually.

Chuck Farrell of Portland's LSW Architects, principal architect on the project, said his primary goal was to design a facility that would remain a useful structure for at least the next 40 years. The original building had several problems that were mostly a matter of age and the design technology at the time it was built, such as excessive heat gain.

"Early in the fall and late in the spring, the rooms get hot and stuffy," Farrell said. "Hopefully we will have resolved a lot of that." He added that the new design calls for insulated glass windows made with materials designed specifically to hold in heat, a major improvement over the single-pane windows currently used throughout the school.

Mark Porterfield, assistant principal of Centennial, said that the renovation process is going smoothly, with minimal disruptions to the educational process.

"Our staff and kids have been great with being flexible and trying to work around (the construction) on a daily basis," he added.

Porterfield credits much of this to Emerick and the measures the company takes to communicate with the school. At the contractor's website, www.emerick.com, for example, students, staff and the community can regularly check the project's progress. On the site, Emerick lists important details like traffic flow information, a detailed project narrative and a map outlining phases of the project (14 in all, along with several sub-phases).

Site visitors can also contact the construction team (which includes Ring, as well as project manager Art Beyer and superintendent Mike Burton).

Those interested can sign up to get regular e-mail updates on the project from the Centennial School District.

The new classrooms and larger student commons area will allow Centennial to comfortably accommodate more students over the next several years.

"Right now we're at 1,750, and we seem to go up about 100 (students) per year," Porterfield said, noting that the school received funding for the project five years ago. "The facility was really limiting with what we could do. We were fortunate enough that our community supported us in getting a new facility."

LSW's Farrell said that once the upgrades are complete, the school will hold as many as 2,000 students.

With more students, the demand for modern technology grows as well. Ring said most rooms in the school will be equipped with lighting controls featuring occupancy sensors. Centennial will also abandon its current analog phone system in favor of a digital system. All phones in the school will be connected into the computer network, and all school computers will have high-speed Internet access.

Aside from the technological upgrades and the interior features - new flooring, paint and fixtures - a stoplight will be added to the south parking lot. Located on 182nd Avenue between Powell and Division streets, Centennial is on a stretch of road where cars, lots of them, travel fast.

"The new stoplight is one of the main safety issues," Farrell said. "We wanted to do everything we could to make it safe for the kids while keeping with the requirements of the city of Gresham." Farrell said that because of the need to stay within the designated budget, LSW was not able to go too far out of the ordinary when it came to the design of the facility.

"With the funds available, a remodel was the only option," he added. "To replace the school would have cost twice as much."