By Max Bowen-max.bowen@northstarreporter.com
A plan to improve Bishop Feehan High School’s performing arts, athletic fields, and classrooms has just gotten the green light.
In an announcement from the school on Sept. 23, Bishop Feehan President Tim Sullivan said the school’s Daring to Believe Campaign has secured commitments of $9.1 million for a renovation project to take place from 2022-2024. The total cost of the various projects is estimated at $13 million. These commitments allow the project to begin construction next year.
“This is our next moment at Feehan,” said Sullivan in a statement. “For 60 years, those who believe in the mission of our school have always stepped up and moved Feehan forward. This Daring to Believe campaign continues that legacy. Alumni from the 60s and 70s, young alums, current parents, future parents,friends from across the country and the world…the entire Feehan Family is making this next stage possible. We dare to believe in a future that’s even brighter than our storied past.”
The campaign will encompass four different projects. The first is increasing financial aid and recruiting and retaining faculty. The school’s three performing arts programs—theater, band, and choir—will see revamped spaces.
A new all-sport, turf surface will replace the currently-grass, baseball-only Beach Field. There will also be new dugouts, scoreboards, lights and spectator seating. The sub-varsity field hockey and soccer teams will have a turf surface for practice and games, and McGrath Stadium turf and track will get on-schedule rebuilds and a new entrance pavilion.
The final portion of the campaign will be a 15,000 square-foot addition to house a Business & Innovation academic department. This will include coding labs, engineering, physics and business classrooms, an IdeaLab (creator/innovation space) and an esports facility.
“Every Feehan student will see the benefits of these changes,” wrote Sullivan in the statement.
Each of these campaign priorities follows the school’s 2019 strategic plan. Feehan has no plan to add students and will instead focus on “knowing each student well’” and serving the existing student body more effectively each year.
While still under development, plans call for the performing arts construction to take place in time for back-to-school 2022, the Innovation Center to open in the Fall of 2023 and the athletics construction in 2023 or 2024.
“We are blessed,” points out Sullivan. “Our campus has been taken care of remarkably well for six decades, allowing us to continually add great new spaces on top of the core of our campus which is still in such great shape.”