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The Pleasanton Unified School District Board of Trustees has approved a nearly $70 million design-build agreement to construct a dual athletic and performing arts facility at Foothill High School — one of the marquee projects funded by the $395 million Measure I bond.
In addition to the new facility that will connect to the existing competition gym, the design from Rodan Builders, Inc., a general contractor in Hayward, will look to completely reimagine that central part of the school with a new pathway, improved lawn seating, a new synthetic turf field and many more improvements.
“This is exciting times,” Board President Mary Jo Carreon said after the unanimous vote on Nov. 14.
Nathan Herrero, a project manager for SVA Architects — a Pleasanton based architect firm that partnered with Rodan Builders — told the board that based on the project’s incremented schedule, construction should be done by 2027.
“The idea would be basically two (and a half) school years from now, we turn over all of this,” Herrero said.
Two years ago, Pleasanton voters approved the Measure I general obligation bond to fund major infrastructure projects such as this one, which has been dubbed the “Campus Renovation Project for Foothill High School”.
The board previously approved the project as part of the district’s Measure I bond implementation plan, which served as an outline for the bond’s project list. The total amount for the design build project is $69,959,143, which falls within the project’s budget under the implementation plan.
Last year, the board hired CASA Studio, a design firm, to develop documents needed for the first step in the design build process.
Aaron Kael, executive director of PUSD’s facilities and construction department, told the board that since then, community members provided input on those documents during multiple public meetings.
Kael said those documents were the “backbone of the project” and that they acted as guidelines for what the community envisioned the project to look like.
The district issued a request for qualifications (RFQ) this past April and after representatives from Foothill, business services, facilities and Van Pelt Construction Services vetted the 12 firms who responded to the RFQ, the list was narrowed down to three firms.
Those three firms attended several meetings where they solicited input from stakeholders before submitting their design proposals and budgets and presenting those submissions to a selection committee.
Kael said the committee — made up of site staff, administrators, district staff and trustees Steve Maher and Kelly Mokashi — chose Rodan Builders based on past history with the firm, the design, cost, scheduling and phasing.
Herrero said the firm spent time analyzing the campus to make sure the proposed project fits within the campus and said in many ways it will make the campus feel more open.
“We’re really freeing up a lot of space within the campus for circulation and outdoor areas,” he said. “We think we’ll really improve the life of the campus.”
The design includes a renovated large gymnasium designed to seat 1,100 attendees, a new weight room, new fitness room, new team rooms, new lockers, a new auditorium with 413 seats, a choir room, a band room and support spaces — all under the same roof.
The project will also renovate the existing practice gym and Building H (which houses art classrooms and the student center); construct a new multi-use athletic field; create tiered steps using the grass area next to the facility and create a new pathway.
Trustee Justin Brown said he liked the facility at a high level but he also questioned the noise of music, theater and sports being all under one facility.
Staff assured Brown that with the help of an acoustical engineer, the firm made sure not to put noisy programs next to each other and that there will be barriers and buffers for the noise — there will also be sound locks specifically for the new auditorium.
Student trustee Filipp Dmitriev also voiced concerns he had about the shared bathrooms in the facility’s main lobby. Kael and Herrero described it as a single, shared-gendered restroom with 12 individual stalls that are more like rooms because the surrounding stall walls extend to the ground. The sinks for everyone would be outside the stalls but in the same shared room.
Dmitriev said he was worried about how that could potentially lead to harassment, which is why he suggested splitting the 12 stalls in half to create separate-gendered restrooms. Staff said they could revisit the bathroom plans because it is still early in the project.
Carreon’s main concern was about the size of the theater having only 413 seats. Even though the similar renovation project for Amador Valley High School hasn’t been finalized, staff said that the new proposed theater is estimated to have more than 500 seats but they explained that the firm’s reasoning behind the different sizes was that it is best to have different spaces to cater to different needs by the community.
She also shared the same concerns Dmitriev had about the logistics of all those sports and arts programs sharing the same space.
But Foothill principal Sebastian Bull said the proposed facility is much better than what they currently have — a single multipurpose room that is packed nonstop throughout the day.
He said while there might be a couple of days out of the year when there might be a game in the gym going on at the same time as a theater performance, at least this new facility has a barrier they can put down in the middle of the lobby.
“Currently, we only have one multipurpose room and one gym,” Bull said. “Things can not fit in all those at the same time anyways so now this is expanding more spaces for a lot of events.”
The first phase of the project is set to start with demolishing the locker rooms next summer, Herrero said.
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“Educate the children and it will not be necessary to punish the men.”
-Pythagoras