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Aug 25, 2022 - Tour of new Lowell High athletic building nearing completion. Main logo on the gym floor. Everything is oriented toward the home team bleachers, which will be to the right. JULIA MALAKIE/LOWELL SUN
Aug 25, 2022 - Jim Dowd of Skanska, right, the owner's project manager, talks with City Manager Tom Golden during a tour of new Lowell High athletic building nearing completion. JULIA MALAKIE/LOWELL SUN
Aug 25, 2022 - Tour of new Lowell High athletic building nearing completion. This is the main boys locker room. JULIA MALAKIE/LOWELL SUN
Aug 25, 2022 - Tour of new Lowell High athletic building nearing completion. The basketball court is named for Ramon Rivera. At left rear is City Manager Tom Golden. JULIA MALAKIE/LOWELL SUN
Aug 25, 2022 - Tour of new Lowell High athletic building nearing completion. Michael Quillay of Select Clean washes the windows of the new building. At left rear, the old Riddick Field House is being torn down. JULIA MALAKIE/LOWELL SUN
Aug 25, 2022 - Directional sign in the new Lowell High athletic building which is nearing completion. JULIA MALAKIE/LOWELL SUN
Aug 25, 2022 - Tour of new Lowell High athletic building nearing completion. Brian Doubleday of Uxbridge, with Pavilion Floors, takes up masking tape on the gym floor. The basketball court is named for Ramon Rivera. JULIA MALAKIE/LOWELL SUN
Aug 25, 2022 - Tour of new Lowell High athletic building nearing completion. Brian Doubleday of Uxbridge, with Pavilion Floors, works on the gym floor. JULIA MALAKIE/LOWELL SUN
Aug 25, 2022 - Tour of new Lowell High athletic building nearing completion. Public women's restroom off the main gym. JULIA MALAKIE/LOWELL SUN
Aug 25, 2022 - Tour of new Lowell High athletic building nearing completion. Ramon Cruz, left, and Anthony [didn't want to include last name], who work for TCA, assemble exercise equipment. JULIA MALAKIE/LOWELL SUN
Aug 25, 2022 - Tour of new Lowell High athletic building nearing completion. Luis Olea of Providence, who works for TCA, assembles a Life Fitness stairmaster in the new fitness center. JULIA MALAKIE/LOWELL SUN
Aug 25, 2022 - Tour of new Lowell High athletic building nearing completion. This will be the mechanical room for everything west of the canal. JULIA MALAKIE/LOWELL SUN
Aug 25, 2022 - Tour of new Lowell High athletic building nearing completion. Soup vats in the new kitchen. JULIA MALAKIE/LOWELL SUN
Aug 25, 2022 - Jim Dowd of Skanska, the owner's project manager, with City Manager Tom Golden, left, explains how this future athletic room space for sports including wrestling and gymnastics, is the temporary library space for Phase 2, before becoming temporary music space in Phase 3, during a tour of new Lowell High athletic building nearing completion. JULIA MALAKIE/LOWELL SUN
Aug 25, 2022 - This future athletic room space in the new Lowell High building for sports including wrestling and gymnastics, is the temporary library space for Phase 2, before becoming temporary music space in Phase 3. JULIA MALAKIE/LOWELL SUN
Aug 25, 2022 - Tour of new Lowell High athletic building nearing completion. The old Riddick Field House being torn down, viewed from the window of the new fitness center. JULIA MALAKIE/LOWELL SUN
Aug 25, 2022 - Tour of new Lowell High athletic building nearing completion. Window washer seen from inside the lobby. JULIA MALAKIE/LOWELL SUN
Aug 25, 2022 - Jim Dowd of Skanska, right, the owner's project manager, talks with City Manager Tom Golden during a tour of new Lowell High athletic building nearing completion. JULIA MALAKIE/LOWELL SUN
Aug 25, 2022 - Tour of new Lowell High athletic building nearing completion. This is the long jump pit, a feature the old field house did not have. The bricks are temporary to hold down the cover. JULIA MALAKIE/LOWELL SUN
Aug 25, 2022 - Trainers' room in the new Lowell High athletic building which is nearing completion. JULIA MALAKIE/LOWELL SUN
Aug 25, 2022 - Jim Dowd of Skanska, the owner's project manager, leads a tour of new Lowell High athletic building nearing completion. JULIA MALAKIE/LOWELL SUN
LOWELL — More than 150 workers were on site Thursday making final preparations to the newly constructed gymnasium and athletic facilities at Lowell High School.
The bright, airy and modern-looking gym represents the first phase of the four-phased construction plan that is expected to be completed by the summer of 2026.
Skanska Program Director Jim Dowd gave a tour to City Manager Tom Golden and others of the space that opens in the 2022-2023 school year for 3,000 new and returning students. The first day of classes is Wednesday, Aug. 31.
Though harried by a constantly ringing phone, Dowd, who is the owner’s project manager on the $381 million phased-occupied renovation, radiated a Zen-like calm, conducting the tour while simultaneously noting items on his clipboard checklist. Some workers were installing directional, or what in the construction trade is called “wayfinding,” signs for students to orient themselves to navigate the new building.
“We have final cleaners going through over the next few days,” Dowd said, “and teams are putting the equipment together in the strength and fitness center.”
Tacky paper lay across entrances to spaces already cleaned to prevent tracking in dust and dirt from areas still under construction. The finished spaces had an untouched sheen and a new-building smell.
The gym building buzzed with energy and activity. On the outside, workers were up on ladders installing the metal lettering of the school name. Others were washing windows and sweeping sidewalks.
Inside the gymnasium, workers were wiping down surfaces and performing touch-up painting on the hardwood floor. Next door, a backhoe cleared debris from the old Riddick Field House demolition that was taking place just outside the fitness room windows.
The state-of-the-art facility occupies a full acre or nearly 36,000 square feet of space, exceeding the 41-year-old Riddick Field House by almost 10,000 square feet. It comes with retractable walls and partitions that Dowd said “allows the gym to be partitioned off in numerous configurations” for simultaneous use by different groups.
Dowd said the “old gym layout was less functional,” and the new gym will incorporate the latest building technologies including Americans with Disabilities Act accessibility, motion-activated lights and sinks and what Dowd called an “orange-peel surface,” which is a layman’s term for the bumpy, nonslip flooring installed in bathrooms and locker rooms.
The Phase 1 gym capacity is 999 people, said Dowd. He pointed to a blank, north-facing wall bordering the gym floor.
“That temporary wall will be eventually removed — it’s behind the visitors bleacher section — and will lead into the cafeteria and down a big staircase into the heart of the school,” Dowd explained. “That additional egress will allow us to expand the capacity of the gym to 3,000 people.”
That phase is expected to be completed in the winter of 2024 to the spring of 2025.
Brian Doubleday, of Uxbridge, peeled away masking tape from the “Ramon Rivera Court” dedication script, which will face the home team bleachers. Doubleday works with Pavilion Floors in Woburn, one of the hundreds of subcontractors working on the project.
Rivera, a graduate of the Class of 1985, was a four-year varsity player for the Red Raiders. During his high school career, Rivera was named to The Sun’s All-Star team, and was named The Sun’s Player of the Year in both his junior and senior years.
The new building includes high-efficiency mechanical systems, which run the heating and air conditioning systems. The massive equipment cooling the gym space hummed quietly when Dowd opened the door.
Lowell High School was founded in 1831 as the nation’s first coeducational and integrated public high school. The building was first expanded in 1922, which will be renovated in Phases 3 and 4. It was expanded again with the 1980s building, a third of which will be demolished to build the new cafeteria, while the other two-thirds will be renovated. That work takes place in Phases 2 and 3. A 2020 video shows the dowdy, dated look of the old school buildings.
The Freshman Academy, located across from Boarding House Park, will eventually be turned over to the School Department, and no longer be part of what will be a contiguous learning space of the new school’s footprint.
Dowd said about half of Skanska’s high school projects are phased-occupied, requiring temporary spaces be constructed to allow for an uninterrupted learning experience.
Workers from Sterling Movers, of Chelmsford, were setting up one of those temporary spaces, moving thousands of books that had been removed from the library located in the Lord Building to a newly committed space in the downstairs gym building.
“We just took the media center offline,” Dowd said. “And this will be the temporary library during Phase 2. In Phase 3, once the wall goes up in the renovated 1980s building, this becomes temporary band and chorus space. By Phase 4, this becomes wrestling and other physical education space in keeping with the gym location.”
Golden, who had previously toured the new gym, said the transformation in just one week was impressive.
“The progress in just one week, even 24 hours, is amazing,” Golden said. He complimented Skanska and the other project partners of Suffolk Construction and architectural design firm Perkins Eastman for getting this first phase ready for the start of school.
“Communication has been absolutely key to getting this done,” Golden noted.
The tour ended where it started, by the ticket window to the right of a broad two-story stairway leading into the gym.
As the group exited the building, Dowd advised, “When you walk out of a building under construction, always look up.”
It could also be a harbinger of things looking up for the school’s version of “opening day.”
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