Waltham Leaders Break Ground On New High School

WALTHAM, MA — In a small ceremony complete with face coverings, several Waltham leaders dug shovels into the ground and moved the earth, symbolizing the beginning of yet another chapter in the development of a new Waltham High School set to open in 2024.

The project to build the high school — at $375 million one of the most expensive in the Commonwealth— has been more than five years and in the making and fraught with controversy.

As city leaders and former leaders spoke, a small group of protesters nearby held up signs like: “It’s not too late to do the right thing,” “New School, Yes, Environmental Destruction, No."

For years, the superintendent's office has been beating the drum about a need for an upgrade to the high school's deteriorating building conditions to accommodate increased enrollment.

The current high school building is 449,700 square feet and was built in 1968, with additions made in 1998 and 2002.

After back and forth between the school district and the city council about a site, the MSBA, which helps pay for school building projects, imposed a timeline for the city if it wanted to get money from the state to help pay for any of it.

The City Council and the School Committee voted to go with the School Department's preferred location about a mile away on the Stigmatine property, in large part because of the size - it's 43 acres. At one point the owners, a religious order, put the property on the market, according to court documents.

When it became clear that the religious order that owned the Stigmatine property was not interested in selling it to the city, a number of city council members voted against taking the property. But, with the deadline looming last year, the city council changed course and voted to take the site by eminent domain. The issue polarized the city, but eventually the two sides came to an agreement and the city moved forward last year, paying around $29 million for the property.

The MSBA agreed to fund $118 million of the project. The new high school is slated to be about 414,854 square feet and serve 1,830 students. The city hired Left Field, a project management firm, SMMA Architects and Consigli Construction.

Then, as plans showed there would be significant blasting of rock during construction that would last years, some neighbors have raised concern about what that might mean for them.

Read more:

• 5 Things To Know About Back To School In Waltham
• Waltham High School Project Gets Neighborhood Liaison...
• Waltham School Officials Share High School Project ...
• Waltham High School Project To Break Ground This Month...
• Waltham Land Trust Postion Against Transfer of Jericho Hill ...
• Waltham Activists Protest New High School ...

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