Construction begins late this month on the new $25 million, 1,200-seat Performing Arts Center at Arcadia High School.
After several years of work on several other major new buildings and projects at the high school and the rest of the schools in Arcadia under the five-year $218 million bond project passed by voters in November 2006, construction on the 40,000 square-foot building by general contractor McCarthy Building Companies, Inc. is starting only a couple months later than scheduled. LPA of Irvine is the project architect and interior designer of the project on a 4.2 acre site at the northwest corner of the school campus at Campus Drive and El Monte Avenue, the ground formerly occupied by the district administration office facing north on Campus Blvd.
We are re-presenting the architect designs of one of the showcase buildings of the entire bond project that we first published here on ArcadiasBest.com in April 2009.
As a reminder, the building, which has always been a part of the overall project with completion date originally scheduled for June 2012 — now set for September 2012, will feature a two-story (“double-height”) glass-enclosed signature lobby and exterior canopies and covered walkways.
The main concert hall, with a capacity for up to 150 musicians, will have lower level and balcony seating, with adjustable sound-absorptive panels that will allow it to be acoustically “tuned” based on the needs of the performance. The building will also include a black box theater, an orchestra room, and a dance studio with a quadruple-sprung wood floor. Students will enjoy direct access to the main hall from three adjacent classrooms. Originally budgeted at $27.4 million, the cost is expected to come in under $25 mil.
“Coordination of above-ceiling mechanical, electrical and plumbing (MEP) and stage rigging in the auditorium will provide further project complexities,” said Randy Cole, project manager for McCarthy. “In order to ensure quality and streamline the project, McCarthy will be leading a 3-D modeling effort to coordinate all above-ceiling spaces.”
Myers Houghton & Partners is the project’s structural engineer and Henrikson Owen & Associates is the mechanical engineer. McCarthy Building Companies, Inc., with offices in Newport Beaach, San Diego, Sacramento, San Francisco, Phoenix, Las Vegas, St. Louis, Dallas, Houston, and Atlanta, is the nation’s 10th largest domestic general contractor (Engineering News-Record, May 2010) and among the 5th largest education builders (Engineering News-Record, October 2008).
— By Scott Hettrick