Lower Merion H.S. Campus Facing 'A Couple Years' of Additional Construction

While the school building itself was completed in 2010 and opened last fall, construction on the campus will likely continue for the next couple years, district spokesman Doug Young told Patch this week.

Though movement between classrooms has not been interrupted, Young admitted noise from the equipment can be bothersome and acknowledged "it does create the need to be flexible and patient" for teachers, staff and students alike.

Young said construction and renovations for the administration building will be completed this year, after which the district will continue with landscaping and site restoration projects. They include renovating Arnold Field and converting a campus parking lot to a playing field.

Under the original project timeline, submitted by Foreman Program and Construction Managers, site restoration at the high school, and the project itself, was expected to be completed this past July.

The renovation of old Lower Merion High building into the district's administration headquarters is the final leg of a decade-plus capitol improvement project the district launched in the mid-1990s. Over this period, each of its 12 schools has been renovated, modernized, or built completely anew.

A deal to have two new high schools built was struck in June of 2004. The construction of Lower Merion High, which opened at the beginning of the 2010-11 school year (the building took about18 months to build) is budgeted to cost $108.6 million, according to Pat Guinnane, 's director of operations.

Guinnane declined to speculate about the likelihood of the project going over budget, or what steps the district would take if that were to occur.

in Bryn Mawr was completed in full by the start of the 2009 school year, at a cost of $103 million.

The administrative building's renovation, priced separately from the high school, will come in somewhere between $11 to $12 million, according to Young. It won't house any education activities, but will be used for after-school programs and board meetings. The old gymnasium will continue to be used in that capacity.