District to celebrate completion of $45.6 million Port High project

It’s finished.

Three-plus years and $45.6 million later,  Port Washington High School is in many ways a new school built atop the hill in the center of the city where it has stood for 88 years.

The result of the Herculean project — one that entailed demolition, new construction and renovation, much of it done while classes were in session — is everything administrators hoped it would be, they said.

Principal Eric Burke said the school has become a destination for alumni celebrating class reunions.

“I give a lot of tours, and when people walk through the main entrance for the first time and see all the windows and the natural light and the size of the classrooms and the music rooms and the gym it’s just breathtaking for them,” he said. 

Port High has become a showcase for the firm that designed it, Bray Architects, and is frequently visited by officials from other school districts considering similar projects, administrators said. 

“They take a look at our school and they say, ‘Boy, you guys did this right,’” Port Washington-Saukville School Supt. Michael Weber said. “They say the school feels just like a college campus.”

The district is inviting the public to tour the school and celebrate the official end of construction during a cookout and dedication celebration from 5 to 7 p.m. Monday, June 3. In addition to food and self-guided tours, the event will include a short program featuring comments by John Ashley, executive director of the Wisconsin Association of School Boards.

The event is a recognition of the support district residents demonstrated when they approved a $49.4 million referendum, albeit by a relatively narrow margin, in April 2015. In addition to $45.6 million for the high school project, the referendum provided $3.8 million for an addition to Dunwiddie Elementary School to address the need for elementary level classrooms. That project was completed in December 2016.

The high school project began in March 2016 when construction crews broke ground for a new three-story academic wing built into the hill on the west side of the north end of the school. The addition, which features spacious classrooms with large west-facing windows, as well as an adjoining library, was completed in May 2017 and occupied in September of that year.

Then came the most challenging part of the project — demolishing the oldest, central part of the school, which dated to 1931.

“The biggest challenge is when we got to the point of taking down the old building and we had to figure out how to move everything out of it,” Burke said. “Our staff and students really pitched in and were flexible throughout the project.”

Then came the construction of a new entrance that leads past offices and a school store to a spacious commons and upper and lower cafeterias with a wall of south-facing windows. 

Adjoining the cafeteria is an arena-style, multiple court gym set into the hillside and spacious music rooms.

The auditorium remained but was gutted. New seating and acoustic wall and ceiling panels, as well as sound and lighting systems, were installed in what is now called the Port Washington High School Performing Arts Center.

“We finished six months early and on budget, which is key in major construction projects like this,” Weber said.

The budget for the project, which was managed by C.D. Smith of Fond du Lac, included a healthy contingency — $3.4 million — in case problems were encountered during the work.

“The main reason for a contingency in a project like this is in case there are oversights or miscommunications or to cover unexpected events, especially when the project included as much earth work as ours did,” Weber said. “But we were fortunate to have very few of those issues, so we could use the contingency to enhance the project by, for instance, adding to the small amount — about $300,000 — we budgeted for furniture.”

About all that remains to be done is the restoration of a field at the north end of the school that has been used as a staging ground for equipment.

“This seemed like a daunting project when we broke ground in March 2016, but it went smoothly,” Weber said. 

The result, he said, is a showcase school that will meet the educational needs of students well into the future.

“We didn’t overdo it,” he said. “I guess the best way to say it is we did it right.”