For the week of  Sept. 26 - Oct. 2, 2001

An architect’s drawing of the new Wood River High School displays its southwest entry. Courtesy of Lombard Conrad-Hummel Architects

 

Hailey OKs 
high school plans

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Groundbreaking Ceremony

A special meeting of the Blaine County School District Board of Trustees will be held 10 a.m. Saturday to conduct a groundbreaking ceremony for the new Wood River High School.

The groundbreaking ceremony with be held at the south end of the football field under the goal post.

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By GREG MOORE
Express Staff Writer

Plans for a new Wood River High School cleared their last major bureaucratic hurdle last week with design-review approval from the city of Hailey.

Construction of the new 180,000-square foot school is scheduled to be begin next spring, and it is scheduled to be open for the 2003 school year.

All that space will accommodate the results of a 3 percent average annual growth in student population over the past three decades. School District Superintendent Jim Lewis said in an interview that 750 students attend the current school building, designed for 650. He said that based on the sizes of current middle school classes, 1,000 students are expected to enroll at the new high school when it opens.

The new building’s capacity will be 1,100 students. Lewis said he expects the school’s enrollment to stabilize for about five years, after which new classrooms can be added as needed.

The school district determined that it would be prohibitively expensive to expand the current building. Instead, that will house the high school’s professional/technical academy, College of Southern Idaho classes and Blaine County Recreation District programs.

The Hailey Planning and Zoning Commission gave its design-review approval following a presentation by architects and exterior lighting designers Tuesday night at Hailey Town Center.

The new school’s exterior will be primarily of tan-colored concrete block, but will include reddish brown brick similar to that in the existing school. The P&Z’s approval came with a condition that the color of flashing, accents and a pitched roof over the entry be changed from dark green to bronze.

An additional condition was that the school district come back with a modified exterior lighting plan. Most of the evening’s discussion centered on the heights and number of lighting poles around the football field and parking lots.

Two neighbors to the school property expressed concern about potential effects of the school’s lights on their homes. P&Z Commissioner Becki Keefer told them that "every effort is being made to contain the light on the property."

Under Hailey zoning ordinance, lighting must create minimum glare and be primarily downcast. Recent additions to the ordinance will provide for more accurate measurements of lighting at the property’s edge, measured in foot-candles.

Boise lighting designer George Eidam told the P&Z that plans for the football field call for four 55-foot-high light poles, two on each side of the field. He said that though such poles create less visual impact than the traditional 80-foot-high poles, they will need to be placed closer to the field, leaving no room for expansion of the bleachers.

Original plans called for 28 25-foot-high poles in the new parking lot, and the reduction of the current lot’s six 25-foot-high poles to 15 feet. In response to questions by commissioners as to whether poles in the new lot could also be reduced to 15 feet, Eidam said that would require an additional seven poles. A compromise was struck at 17-foot-high poles.

The school district will need to present an acceptable lighting plan to the city before it can obtain an occupancy permit for the new building.

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