Minuteman Regional to Replace 40-Year-Old Technical High School

LEXINGTON, Mass. — A groundbreaking on the new $144.9 million Minuteman Regional High School in Lexington is scheduled for as early as June, and the project is already expected to open one year ahead of schedule.

Minuteman Superintendent Edward Bouquillon announced at the end of March that the new school building will be ready for students by August 2019, a drastic difference from the initial fall 2020 opening date. Demolition of the existing school building and construction of athletic fields will follow and will be completed by summer 2020. In January, the school hired Providence, R.I.-headquartered Gilbane Building Company as the construction manager at-risk (CMAR).

The new school will replace the current Minuteman High School, which was established in the 1970s as one of more than two-dozen, regional-vocational technical high schools in the state of Massachusetts, according to the school’s website. Since 2009, the school has looked for options, including repairs and replacements, to bring the facility up to the Feasibility Study guidelines from the Massachusetts School Building Authority (MSBA), finally deciding that a new building was the best option for students and the most affordable option for taxpayers. The new high school will be partially paid for by an approximately $44 million reimbursement from the MSBA.

Over the past several years, the towns that comprise the Minuteman Regional Vocational Technical Public School District have been in negotiations to determine the size of the school building and its ideal enrollment. As a result, seven of the 16 towns that were originally included in the district chose to leave it after a restructuring of the new regional agreement, reported Wicked Local, a local news outlet.

The school will support an enrollment of 628 students and will offer 16 career and technical education majors that range from robotics to biotechnology to multimedia engineering. The district even secured $1 million in funding for equipment related to its new advanced manufacturing program, according to Wicked Local. The new building project will also include a theater for the multimedia engineering program that has projection and post-production capabilities as well as the ability to broadcast programming throughout the building using LexMedia and other broadcasting systems, Bouquillon said in a statement.

In addition to Gilbane Building Company as CMAR, Boston-based Kaestle Boos is serving as the architect and New York-headquartered Skanska is serving as the owner’s project manager.