MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Bonding discussions to pay for construction of Monongalia County School’s Renaissance Academy are now ready to move forward.
The Monongalia County Board of Education (BOE) unveiled the design for the proposed 137 acre campus during their meeting Tuesday, with representatives from bond counsel Crews and Associates discussing a preliminary bonding request of up to $125 million to fund construction. The campus, designed by architecture firm DLR Group, will consist of the main 135,000-square-foot facility, which will house two floors of state-of-the-art STEM classrooms and lab space dedicated to career-specific pathways. That will be surrounded by 135 acres of developable land for future expansion. The campus will be located just along I-79 by Blue Horizon Drive in Morgantown, within equal driving distance of all three county high schools and the Monongalia County Technical Education Center (MTEC).
“It’s definitely the open concept we’re looking for, a lot of open spaces, a lot of natural light, the economic aspect of it is going to be the question mark as far as what it’s going to take to build it,” said Monongalia County Board of Education President Ron Lytle. “We’re going to have to look at it and work on it, and make it a usable space, and make it something that we can afford to build.”
The main building that will be the center of the Renaissance Academy campus will host a combination of career certification and college preparatory classes in a two-story structure. Designs from the DLR Group showed that the first floor would consist of a combination of open-air classrooms and career-focused lab spaces with specific focuses on careers in health sciences, mechanical maintenance, technology, and sectors with high job demand within the county workforce (i.e., agriculture, HVAC, and culinary arts). The second floor will include four STEM labs, four IT labs, and rooms to serve career education, media/research, and student services. There are also plans to further develop the site, as needs are determined by students, Monongalia County Schools staff, and the BOE.
“We are showing a possible expansion of the first building, and then we are showing areas where other buildings that can be built in the future,” said DLR Group Principal John Chadwick, who has led the design of the Renaissance Academy. “It’s really being designed as a campus, so you try to make it adaptable for future needs that you don’t know now as possible,” he said.
Preliminary bonding proposals released by representatives from Crews and Associates and fellow bond counsel firm Steptoe and Johnson showed requests ranging from $110 million to up to $125 million would be enough to construct the Renaissance Academy. Those numbers are pending funds received on a federal level due to the abandoned mine location that will be developed for the project and any private sector contributions that may be proposed as part of participation by local stakeholders. The Monongalia County BOE did not affirm any final numbers on what they will ask as part of the bonding requests, but they do expect to have a formal proposal in place in time for a public vote in May 2024.
“We’re trying to feel that out, we’re trying to figure out what we can build, what we need, we need to define what we need before we can start defining what we’re going to pay for something and what size it can be,” said Lytle. “We have to work through that, it’s a long process, over the next month, we’re going to really have to work on it and get it nailed down,” he said.
The goal for the Monongalia County Board of Education is to vote on a formal bonding request by the end of December, with the DLR Group projecting to have a final cost estimate for the Renaissance Academy to be released by December 14. If the bonding process avoids any conflicts and voters pass the BOE requests next May, the project is aimed at being completed by 2027. When it’s completed, the campus is expected to serve approximately 800 students with convertable classrooms that can adapt to job demand in diverse sectors and a curriculum that can allow students to adapt to career fields of their choice. The ultimate goal for the Renaissance Academy for Monongalia County Schools is to become an all-in-one stop for advanced education for students in the county.
“As we start to put this together, I’m sure we’re going to hear what people (voters) are looking for and what we can do to make sure what we’re doing is economically feasible and responsible,” said Lytle.