(Washington, DC) Mayor Adrian M. Fenty on Monday joined workers to demolish the former Terrell Junior High School to make way for the new $47 million Walker Jones School, library, recreation center and athletic fields at Northwest One.
“This is going to be a first-class facility from top to bottom,” Mayor Fenty said. “If we are to expect excellence from our students we’ve got to provide great facilities that promote an integrated environment for learning.”
The education and recreation complex is a new model for co-locating community facilities with libraries and schools in the District. The new Walker Jones will be one of the first new schools built during the Fenty Administration and ready in time for the start of the 2009 school year.
The project will include a 100,000 square foot K-8 school; a 20,000 square foot community recreation center; a 5,000 square foot library and new athletic fields and playgrounds. The collective facilities will share resources such as common utilities, mechanical systems and maintenance. The school will meet the District’s aggressive green building standards and will include a green roof.
It is being built by Forrester Construction, Regan Associates and Banneker Ventures. The construction team will maintain at least 50 percent local participation in the project.
The Walker Jones project is a part of the $700 million Northwest One New Community project, which includes building more than 1,600 new units of housing – apartments, condos and townhouses – to replace the troubled Sursum Corda and Temple Courts housing complexes and improve under-used government-owned land.
The New Communities model calls for a third of the units to be made available at market rates, a third to be sold or rented at affordable rates and the final third to provide replacement housing for current residents. New Communities also have substantial human capital programs to ensure residents have ready access to health care, job training and other supportive social services. The District’s other New Communities are Barry Farm/Park Chester/Wade Road in Ward 8, Lincoln Heights/Richardson Dwellings in Ward 7 and Park Morton in Ward 1