Frequently Asked Questions
Ogden High School is a public school. Shouldn’t taxpayers pay for restoring the school?
The Ogden School District recognizes that OHS is a community jewel and that tearing it down is simply not an option. However, their consultants estimated that the cost of building a new high school from scratch would be approximately $55 million, whereas the cost for restoring and adding needed new space to OHS would be close to $70 million (today’s dollars). When the district went to Ogden voters with a bond proposal it pledged that if voters would approve the bond, the district would undertake to raise a portion of the difference in cost through a fund raising campaign. When the voters approved the bond proposal in June, 2006 the district immediately began laying the groundwork for a capital campaign to help with the restoration.
Does the school district have any fundraising experience?
The Ogden School Foundation is running the capital campaign. This foundation has been raising funds to benefit the programs of the entire district since 1980. Its signature fundraising event for the past twelve years is the Fall Author Event, well known for bringing to the community such notable writers as David McCullough, Amy Tan, and Ray Bradbury. The Ogden School Foundation raises three quarters of a million dollars annually and is one of the most respected school foundations in Utah.
Why is the OHS restoration being done in phases?
First, the district requires that OHS remain in use during its restoration. There simply isn’t a suitable space to house an entire high school population for several years. Second, the needed funding is not available all at one time. Thus, the district’s consultants developed a plan that would restore the building in phases.
What are the phases?
Phase 1 will add a new gymnasium on the east side of the school, next to the existing swimming pool building. It will also include a major upgrade to the existing cafeteria space along with a new a new commons area, reconfigure current parking lots, and add a beautifully landscaped courtyard. Additionally, it will provide major upgrades to the heating and electrical systems by providing needed lines for increased service that will be connected to the main building in phase 2.
Phase 1 is in design now and construction is scheduled to begin in 2007.
Phase 2 will focus on the south end of the main building and will include the classrooms on each floor, including the conversion of the old gym space into science classrooms and labs, and fine arts/theater space.
Phase 3 will finish the restoration of the entire north wing of the school.
Does the bond that passed in 2006 include enough money for all three phases?
No. The bond was designed to cover phases 1 and 2. Escalating construction costs has limited this bond to phase 1, about $25 million. Phases two and three will be included in a future bond election (or elections).
How does the capital campaign fit into the phasing?
The capital campaign is raising funds to restore the auditorium and to restore or replace all of the windows and doors in the school. Both projects will begin as soon as funding is available.
Why the auditorium and the windows and doors?
Most people feel that the auditorium is the most remarkable and important space in this most remarkable and important building. It seemed natural to ask for public support for the most public space in the building.
Restoring the windows and doors makes sense because they can be done at any time during the entire project. If funding can be secured early there will be substantial cost savings by avoiding the inevitable inflation that plagues the construction industry. Restoring the windows and doors will also result in significant energy savings for the school, and will have a major impact on the building’s aesthetics. It will be a strong symbolic message to Ogden residents that donors saw the value of saving OHS and stepped up to the plate.
Why does it cost so much to renovate the auditorium?
OHS has been in continuous heavy use for 70 years, since it opened. Historic preservation of a landmark public building like OHS requires doing everything that will allow it to function well for the next 70 years. In addition to making it sparkle again, the project involves a seismic retrofit and the replacement or upgrading of all of the systems that make an auditorium work – plumbing, electricity, air conditioning, stage house equipment, etc.
Is a seismic upgrade necessary? If so, shouldn’t the district pay for that?
When the district was making the choice to restore OHS, it had to compare that choice with building a new school. The comparison is financial of course, but perhaps more importantly, it is functional. A restored OHS has to function like a new school in order to meet the district’s educational mission. Included in this functionality are life safety concerns. A new school would certainly be designed to today’s seismic standards, which require that a building be sufficiently strong to allow students to exit safely in the event of an earthquake. For OHS, the district and its consultants decided that the entire building would receive a seismic upgrade during the relevant phase of construction. They felt that they could not in good conscience do anything less. The auditorium is especially important because of its large open span, and the concern that the entire student body could be trapped there if a large earthquake occurred during an assembly. As mentioned above, historic preservation involves doing everything that will allow OHS to function well for the next 70 years.
Because of the historic importance of the auditorium’s interior the district chose a method to do the seismic retrofit that is more expensive than it will be for the rest of the school. For the rest of the school the seismic work will involve applying a thin layer of concrete to the interior walls of the classrooms. This is easy and relatively inexpensive in those spaces because the walls do not have significant finishes. They are just walls. However, to do that in the auditorium would mean the destruction of much of what makes it great. Instead, contractors will drill holes inside the walls from the roof to the foundation and build a reinforced concrete frame for the building without disturbing the interior finishes. In a sense, the seismic reinforcing of the auditorium is the most important piece of its historic preservation. It is literally what allows the auditorium to remain in use and to do so without disturbing the elements that make it so wonderful. It is precisely this kind of increased cost to “do the right thing” for OHS that the district pledged to raise from the community.
I heard that the District just reduced the scope of work for Ogden High. What’s up with that?
Faced with unprecedented inflation in construction and labor costs, the District had to reduce the scope of its overall projects (two high schools, and multiple elementary and middle schools) to match the funding that it has currently available. Because Ogden High was always planned to be done as a series of distinct projects so that it could be in continuous operation as a school, the District decided to push one project from the initial phase into the next round of funding. The District will delay the conversion of the old gym space into new science labs and fine arts/theater space.
What does that mean for Ogden High?
The best outcome for any historic landmark is that it remain in its original use. Because this round of funding (both public and private) fixes the school’s most vexing problems, it ensures that OHS will remain a public high school into the distant future. This initial phase solves the school’s main functional problems by adding a much needed cafeteria/commons area, and a state of the art gymnasium, which will help relieve the heavy traffic and use in the historic building as well as solve challenging Title IX (gender equity sports) issues. It will also move the problematic parking area from the interior of the campus to the perimeter, and create a beautifully landscaped courtyard. Finally, this phase also fixes the seismic issue in the auditorium, and restores it to its original beauty, and replaces the windows, which will be an important aesthetic improvement, not to mention the substantial energy savings. With these projects finished there will be no debate about the school’s future and the District will have every incentive to finish the job as soon as funding allows. Nobody likes a funding set back, especially the District, but the campaign committee believes that the district has acted responsibly in the face of mounting construction costs.