Boston Public Schools, the Boston Public Facilities Department, and the Massachusetts School Building Authority held a community meeting on March 23 to discuss the development of the new Josiah Quincy Upper School building. Also behind the project are the Boston Office of Neighborhood Services, HMFH Architects, Skanska USA Building, and Turner Construction. Construction for the building, which will be designed for students in grades 6-12, will begin in July this year.
“The Josiah Quincy Upper School is a pilot school established in 1997 and placed, in that time, in temporary housing at the old Lincoln school on Arlington Street and Bay Village,” said Pip Lewis, principal and project director from HMFH Architects. “That has been temporary for a long period of time. Ever since then […] they have been looking to find a spot for their permanent facility. The temporary facility was a ‘make-do’ facility that was expanded to include a number of modular classrooms that are currently on the site that we’re proposing to build on, but between those two buildings, there was no gymnasium. There really wasn’t an adequate science program. There’s no library or a lot of facilities that a normal, stand alone middle school-high school would have.”
The site of the new building is at Washington Street and Marginal Road, and construction is expected to be completed by the 2024-25 school year. During the summer, 6th and 7th grade classroom materials will be moved from modulars to the Arlington Street campus. The streetscape character is also expected to bring new vitality to the neighborhood, with improved bike lanes, 38-40 bicycle parking places for student and faculty use, and seating areas, as well as tree and planting areas. There will be windows facing the street on all four sides of the building. Students sitting in the library will be able to look out windows and enjoy the view, said Lewis.
Other features to the building include a 125-seat black box theater, overlooking Pine Street. Seats will be moveable and can be arranged in different ways, intended for experimental theater productions. A regular auditorium has 435 seats and a traditional stage, ideal for musical performances and large presentations. There will also be a full sized gymnasium, a culinary arts classroom, and a rooftop outdoor educational space. The building will also have spaces that are available to the public, such as a basketball court.
Lewis said that design for the structure began before the coronavirus spread, but that it had already been informed by an understanding of the level of pollution that Chinatown receives, particularly from the I-90 and I-93 highways.
“We had already been designing for a much higher grade filtering of the air,” said Lewis. He added, “We are planning for what would happen if there’s another pandemic. It just so happened that we were paying really close attention to clean air because of where the building is located. In addition to filtering the air to a higher degree than normal, we are bringing the fresh air that will circulate through the building from high up in the building. The worst of the pollutants are nested down low to the ground. By bringing the air in from closer to the roof line, we’re bringing in cleaner air, then filtering it, to ensure that the quality of air in the school is very good.”
The building will have layers of security, including surveillance cameras and hallways with clear sight lines and no dead ends, so that no one can be trapped by a pursuer. It has one entrance, which will be monitored by administration. To get into the school, an individual must be buzzed into the vestibule, where they would speak to a person about their intentions in visiting, before they would be buzzed into the rest of the building.
The March 23 discussion was the sixth community meeting for the project, and the team is working to involve input from Chinatown leaders, residents, and community members. Still, Director of the Chinatown Community Land Trust Lydia Lowe has said that because the process has been driven by a state school building authority process, the designation of the land was “fast tracked,” and some community members who are only indirectly involved are still catching up with the process.
“I think that the whole community wants to see the Josiah Quincy Upper School have a permanent campus, but because it is a municipal project, the process for designating Parcel A and the review process for the project has not followed the same path as other development projects, originating within the school and public facilities arms of city government,” wrote Lowe, in an email. “So, the concern is that community residents, nearby property owners and stakeholders have the opportunity to weigh in with any concerns before the whole design is a done deal.”
