6/7/2012 - West Side Leader
     

WEST AKRON — As school is about to let out for Firestone High School and Litchfield Middle School students, the planning is well under way for their future building.

Akron Public Schools (APS) officials provided an update on the planning for the Firestone/Litchfield Community Learning Center (CLC) at Firestone May 31.

Architect John Peterson, of GDP Group, reported Litchfield staff members are packing up for the move this summer into the swing space at the old Perkins Middle School, 630 Mull Ave. Perkins students will be in the new Buchtel/Perkins CLC that is scheduled to open in August.

Once it is vacant, the Litchfield building will be abated of hazardous materials and then demolished. Construction of the new CLC will take place on the Litchfield site; Firestone students will remain in the high school for the three years of construction.

The new building is being planned to hold 640 middle-school students (grades six through eight) and 1,400 high school students (grades nine through 12), Peterson said. The three-story building will include 364,000 square feet of space.

The architects have held more than 30 meetings so far with school staff and administrators — including curriculum staff, building operations and security — to determine the academic and special needs of every department and to plan the building’s spaces to accommodate them, Peterson said.

Whereas at the last community planning meeting at Firestone in March, the tentative drawings had just blocks of spaces, now those spaces have specific rooms planned in them.

All of the combined Firestone/Litchfield building will be built new except the natatorium and adjacent auxiliary gym/activities center, which will be renovated, he said. A new planetarium will be built to replace the current one at Firestone, said Paul Flesher, APS director of facility planning and capital improvements.

The entrance to the Firestone side, as previously announced, will be on Castle Boulevard, with a drop-off drive for arriving students. Visitors will be buzzed in through the front doors to the reception area.

There will be a large open area inside the entrance similar to Firestone’s commons, Peterson said, with administrative and counseling offices on the right and the learning resource center (LRC, or library) on the left. There will be several open courtyards and “a lot of glass for light,” he said.

The Firestone gymnasium toward the center of the building will seat approximately 2,700 people, the same as the current gym, said Peterson. There also will be second-floor access to the gym and seating on three sides, as now.

The building had been slated to have eight science labs, but since the honors diploma requires additional physics, they have added another lab, he said. There will be two chemistry labs and seven other multifunctional labs for biology, physics and earth sciences.

The building will be wired for technology and also wireless, said Flesher. The planners will meet in the next few weeks to determine to what extent the academic programming requires wireless, with the added challenge that the technology keeps changing, he said.

Since Firestone is a visual and performing arts school, the arts areas require extra planning. Peterson said the district hired a performing arts consultant, Jones and Phillips Associates Inc., to help them develop the site and floor plans for the auditorium, ancillary areas and teaching spaces for the music, theater and dance classes.

The planners are making a list of items to salvage from the schools, Peterson said, such as the bust of Harvey Firestone, the Don Drumm sculpture in the Firestone cafeteria, the Wall of Fame and the memorial to Judith Resnik in the LRC.

They will continue to develop floor plans over the summer, Peterson said, to review with staff in the fall. They will then develop the construction documents, with bidding expected to begin in early spring.

The new building should be ready to occupy in fall of 2015, he said. Firestone then will be vacated, abated and demolished, followed by final site work and grading of the former Firestone area for an athletic practice field.

Peterson said over the summer, renderings will be developed to show what the building will look like from the outside. They will be available to see at the next update meeting on the CLC to be scheduled in the fall.

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