Updated plans for the new Lincoln Junior High School building were presented to the Plymouth School Board Tuesday.
Architect Brian Bohlender with Barton-Coe-Vilamaa explained the new building will consist of three main sections: “A physical education and wellness section with the gym being kind of the hub of that, surrounded by the support spaces, a lobby with access to public restrooms. At the core of the building’s the main office and that secure entryway, music space, the cafeteria with a small stage and kitchen, and then that building support area, kind of at that center core.” Some of the features include a gym with room for two basketball courts and a two-lane running track, and a cafeteria that could also double as a performance space with room for up to 500 audience members.
The third portion will be a two-story, T-shaped classroom section on the east side of the new building. “Most of our classroom wings are organized around our major core classes of a math room, a science classroom with a lab and some prep space, two humanities rooms kind of back to back here so that they can interact with each other,” Bohlender explained, “and then you’ll see either, depending on where you’re at in the building, an intervention room at the corner here, or on the upper level, those are foreign language rooms, Chinese, and English as a Second Language rooms there.”
Bohlender said the east end of the T will house the specialty instruction spaces. “There’s an ISS room here,” he said. “There’s an art room here with a small kiln room, an agriscience room with an aquaponics component and then classroom space next to it. There’s the family and consumer science room, which is divided between kitchenettes, and a kind of seating and sewing instruction area.”
Tying everything together will be a sort of grand staircase. “Not only can you use the stairs to go between the two floor levels,” Bohlender explained, “but there’s also the deep stairs here, tiered seating in between the stairways, that face a presentation space on the first floor.”
Superintendent Andy Hartley said the school board should be able to take action to advertise for construction bids next month, before awarding a bid in April.
