Construction fences, heavy machinery and plywood-covered windows have appeared on the campus of Red Bank Regional High School in Little Silver in recent weeks.
What’s Going On Here? Read on…
A view of the planned addition to the existing media center. (Image by DiCara/Rubino Architects. Click to enlarge.)
What’s going on is the start of a multifaceted, $17.3 million capital facilities project. Voters in the three sending towns of Red Bank, Little Silver and Shrewsbury approved the work by referendum in 2018.
The centerpiece of the project: an addition of 10 classrooms to accommodate soaring enrollment. School officials expect tuition-paying enrollees of RBR’s vaunted four-year academies from outside the sending districts to fill some of the new seats and offset the overall costs, they said in the lead-up to the referendum.
In December, the district board of ed awarded an $8.14 million contract for the addition to Woodward Construction Company of Matawan. DiCara/Rubino Architects did the design. Preliminary construction got underway last month, Superintendent Lou Moore told redbankgreen last week.
The project constitutes the first expansion of the building footprint since the former Red Bank High School opened on its new Little Silver campus as Red Bank Regional in 1975, said Moore. And it comes with “some short-term inconveniences and challenges,” he acknowledged.
Among them: plywood covering the two-story windows of the media center facing Ridge Road, which was installed for safety reasons, Moore said. And “we’re going to have to find a temporary home” for the media center by next fall, he said.
But the disruption, when it ends in 2021, “will deliver big benefits for our students and faculty in the form of state-of the-art facilities,” Moore said.
Also on tap under the referendum:
• A new roof, at a cost of $3.68 million, to be installed by Safeway Contracting. Completion is expected by the start of the next school year in September, said board President Frank Neary.
• An artificial turf football field to replace the grass field, under a $521,000 contract with FieldTurf USA, also this summer.
• A new concession stand is to be built by Woodward, at cost of $719,00o. That should be ready for this year’s graduation, Neary said.
(Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge.)
