Location, location…or not
Ordean Middle School is slated to become east side high school, but objections persist over the site.
8/19/2008
by Richard Thomas
As part of the “Red Plan” adopted by the school board in 2007, The Duluth school district plans to close Central High School after the 2010-11 school year. The two remaining high schools will be on the east and west sides of town. East High School will be turned into a middle school. Ordean Middle School will be remodeled and expanded to become the new east side high school.
Ordean had an enrollment of 722 in June 2008, and will expand to accommodate approximately 1,600 students. The project is in the design phase, with construction expected to start in 2009 and finish in 2011.
Kent Worley, the landscape architect who designed Lake Place on the Lakewalk, was a longtime resident in the Ordean neighborhood until he moved out of state last fall. He made suggestions to the school district administration and Johnson Controls Inc., the Red Plan project manager, for making the Ordean expansion work. But he recently told BusinessNorth, “They should clearly abandon this undersized site.
“The site is too small to accommodate all the physical needs of a high school by being at least half the size recommended by the Minnesota Department of Education, who has learned this over decades of experience across the state,” he said.
“This small site size coupled with traffic overload at 40th/London Road and Superior Streets should indicate clearly that the Ordean site does not work, and optional sites have needed to be considered from the beginning.”
Supt. Keith Dixon said there are no optional sites. “There’s nothing is the cards that says we’re going anywhere else at this point. I just don’t see that.”
The Ordean design is still in “a very preliminary stage,” said Kerry Lieder, property and risk manager for the Duluth School District.
Worley said the plans Johnson Controls has shown the public “confirmed they don’t know what they’re doing…If they’re going to other schools with the same level of regard and options, I fear for them. They missed the ball at Ordean.”
Like the Red Plan today, Interstate 35 construction along Lake Superior in the 1970s was presented to the public as inevitable. But a community movement, of which Worley was a leader, pressured the Minnesota Department of Transportation (Mn/DOT) to change its plans and make room for the Lakewalk.
Does size matter?
The Ordean property is nearly 28 acres. The appraisal from commercial Realtor F.I. Salter calls it a “large (for Duluth) school site.” The Duluth firm is the district’s real consultant for the project.
The district plans to acquire 7.04 acres of neighboring property, making the total nearly 35 acres.
The state education agency’s Guide for Planning School Construction Projects recommends 35-40 acres for a “small high school” (less than 2,000 students) plus “one additional acre for each 100 students.” Thus the recommended size for a school with 1,600 students is 51-56 acres.
Partly because Duluth is built on a hill, the district packs its schools into small spaces. East High School has 12.71 acres for 1,245 students (June 2008). Denfeld High School on the west side has 13.15 acres for 965 students. Under the Red Plan Denfeld will increase to 1,500 students on just 15.35 acres.
Central is the only high school with adequate space as defined by the guidelines: 77 acres for 950 students.
“We have a number of sites that are smaller than guidelines,” said Lieder. He said the guidelines are intended “typically for new construction.”
The state agency accepted the Red Plan despite the proposed undersized sites. The agency “has concerns regarding the small acreage of some existing school sites,” wrote state education Commissioner Alice Seagren in a Nov. 13, 2007 letter to Dixon. “Given the lack of undeveloped, usable land in your City of the First Class, in consideration of the district’s commitment to obtain additional land…and in consideration of the district and city cooperative effort to use city parks and lands for educational purposes, school sizes…will be accepted.”
In July the school board voted to acquire 55 acres north of Wheeler Field off Grand Avenue for the new western middle school. Board members and administrators cited the state guidelines as dictating the needed space.
Dixon said that state’s recommendation is “not absolute, it’s a design criteria. In essence you present a plan and then it’s sort of, how are you going to make this work on the site?
“A site can also vary about, obviously you can reduce the footprint if you have more levels in the building, as an example. You also look at the idea of partnerships relative to, what kind of partnerships you have with parks and rec, or other community assets, so all that’s taken into consideration. You look at size but you also look at how you’re going to deliver the program,” Dixon said.
There goes the neighborhood
The Ordean expansion calls for acquiring private property to the west.
The westward expansion results in “the least impact on the adjacent community,” states the F.I. Salter appraisal. “Safety was also a concern as students would not have to cross 40th Avenue which is [a] high traffic street.”
The expansion also calls for a 450-car parking lot, to be located on the northwest end of the campus. The site now is a deep ravine and creek bed.
“It’s ridiculous,” said Brian Ronstrom, whose property at 3860 E. Superior St. would be acquired. “Did anyone look at this area before they made the plans?”
He said the district and Johnson Controls should have known better what they were doing before taping a note to his door in January, to notify him his land would be taken.
In protest Ronstrom built an eight-foot high sculpture in his front yard of a tyrannosaurus rex devouring as a symbol of the school district devouring taxpayers. There’s also a more peaceful-looking stegosaurus bearing the sign “Woodlands Wildlife.”
The district also intends to purchase three other properties to the west of the school. None of the owners are happy.
“I don’t know if our neighborhood can sustain that big a high school. It’s a stretch,” said Sandy Leake, a Superior Street resident who would lose her back yard.
The Leake’s rear windows overlook a view of forest and lake. If the current Ordean plan is implemented, the view will become a landscape of cars.
The largest lot to be acquired is five acres of wooded land owned by Robert and Charlotte Boyd on Greysolon Road, to be converted into sports fields. The Boyds have no intention of selling, and the district may have to resort to eminent domain.
Bald eagles nest on the Boyds’ property and federal law prohibits their disturbance.
“This is a unique inner city green space that should not be compromised,” Ronstrom said.
Worley’s suggested design would preserve the ravine and avoid taking the Superior Street properties. Still his design places parking lots on the Boyds’ property. Worley based the design on files sent to him by Johnson Controls in mid-2007, in which the Boyds’ land appeared as an unnamed five-acre parcel.
Worley said excessive slopes make four acres on the current Ordean site un-buildable. Lieder disagrees.
“’Buildable’ is a relative thing when it comes to construction standards. Building on rock, building in areas that are entirely hillsides, Duluth is full of them and construction has taken place many years,” he said.
“As standards have evolved and changed there are certainly environmental concerns that need to be addressed differently today than they did in the past. So that’s something that we’re going to be looking at as we develop our design for Ordean, what type of environmental concerns or issues are there— what type of adjustments in the design are needed to safeguard and minimize the impact on those concerns,” Lieder said.
Regarding the eagle nest, Lieder said, “Exactly how the facility would be constructed in its relative location to the bald eagle or other environmentally sensitive areas, it’s still in the works so we really can’t say. We certainly acknowledge the eagle is there.”
Heavy traffic
With Ordean converting to a high school the student body will more than double in size and become of driving age.
Ordean is located near the intersection of London Road and 40th Avenue East, along “one of the most congested highway segments in Duluth,” according to the Minnesota Department of Transportation (Mn/DOT). The entire five-mile stretch from 26th Avenue East to the four-lane expressway near 66th Avenue East “is experiencing increased commuter traffic, truck and tourist traffic, and rush-hour back-ups at major access points.”
Near Ordean “there’s considerable traffic now with parents dropping kids off and heading onto London Road,” said Todd Campbell, Mn/DOT project manager for the London Road Corridor Study that began in 2006.
Members of the project advisory committee met with representatives of Johnson Controls and the school board, who provided a profile of the number of students and where they would come from. But “the school district hasn’t done a complete traffic modeling yet,” Campbell said.
Based on available information, Campbell said the probable impact will be far more dramatic on Superior Street since most student traffic will come down the hill rather than from the lakeside. Superior Street is the city’s jurisdiction rather than Mn/DOT’s.
Cari Pedersen, city of Duluth transportation engineer, said the city has held preliminary meetings with representatives of the school board and Johnson Controls. “They haven’t studied what they’re going to do, other than we know there are going to be more cars,” she said.
Campbell said London Road traffic “probably won’t be considerably more than now” with Ordean’s conversion. “The proposals we got will more than adequately handle it,” he said.
Superior Street resident Ronstrom isn’t buying it. “The idea that the students won’t drive on London Road is a crock of s—t,” he said.
Scott Sannes of the Duluth design firm SEH Inc. and a member of the London Road transportation committee, said it will continue to work with the school district as its plan develops.
He said the impact of additional traffic will be minimal because high schools open later than the morning peak travel time and let out before afternoon rush hour.
Campbell said students driving off campus for lunch at London Road fast food restaurants might create a “mini-rush” at noon, but would not add to morning and afternoon rush hour traffic.
The Ordean plan so far does not include a new entrance onto London Road, though Worley’s suggested design has one near 36th Avenue East.
The advisory committee recommends several ways to reduce traffic problems on London Road: Re-stripe the road from three to four lanes, reduce the speed limit from 40 to 30, and narrow lanes from 12 to 11 feet, thus encouraging slower speeds. At 40th Avenue East it suggests an improved signal system, pedestrian crosswalks, turn lanes, and a slip ramp from the avenue to westbound traffic on London Road. A roundabout at the intersection is a suggested long-term solution.
Worley said, “No one has even discussed the fact that the school expanding they are showing, being parallel with Superior Street and the lake will remove the views of Lake Superior that now exist from along Superior Street. That coupled with the difference in elevation of land near the old building will probably mean severe earth cut and probable disposal in the beautiful wooded westerly ravine in order to match the old building floor elevations with the expansion. These conditions illustrate clearly that this is the wrong site for a high school.”
Representatives of Johnson Controls have not yet responded to interview requests for this article.