Lexington’s Tates Creek High would get new building instead of renovation under proposal

Rather than a previously approved renovation, Lexington’s Tates Creek High would get a new building under a new proposal pending before the Fayette school board.

The estimated total new costs of a new building could be $83 million, said district chief operations officer Myron Thompson.

The school board approved an approximately $77.2 million renovation for Tates Creek High last fall, subject to state approval. Tates Creek High School was originally built in 1965 and renovated in 1993.

The renovation of the existing building and the construction of an addition would have totaled about 287,125 square feet for 1,866 students, Fayette County Public Schools district officials previously said.

Since then, district staff and the design team have met with Kentucky Department of Education officials and found that the renovation would exceed the maximum allowable cost of $190 per square foot, school board documents said. “It would be more cost effective to build new,” the document said.

“A new building at this location would be more energy efficient and allow for a 21st century design with new building systems and ... is consistent with the approach used on the last high school renovation at Bryan Station High School,” the board document said. Portions of an older building were kept and incorporated into a new building for Bryan Station High School in 2007, the Herald-Leader previously reported.

Under the proposal, construction could start in the summer of 2020 and would take two and a half to three years, said Melinda Joseph-Dezarn, district director of Facility Design and Construction. That’s the same amount of time that a renovation could take.

To build a new Tates Creek High instead of renovating the existing building, school board members are requesting permission from the state Education Department to reassemble the district’s Local Planning Committee, according to the school board documents.

District officials would have to work out the logistical challenges of where classes would be held on the Tates Creek campus at various times during the construction, Thompson said.

Frederick Douglass was the last new high school built by Fayette County. The roughly $82 million 350,000-square-foot building opened on Winchester Road in 2017.

Board member Daryl Love mentioned at Thursday’s school board planning meeting that Tates Creek High has been the subject of complaints about the current building, including leaks.

Jenna Shalash, serving as this month’s non-voting guest student member of the school board, attends Tates Creek and said the proposal for a new building was welcomed news.

“It is a distraction when we are in class taking a test and we feel water on our heads and on our papers,” she said.

This story was originally published April 11, 2019 at 9:24 AM.