By Lisa Awbrey, HANC President
The HANC Board recently heard from Dan Miller, Head of Urban School on an upcoming construction project to convert the old St. Agnes gymnasium on Page Street to a Performing Arts Complex and Community Center. Urban School has been talking about this project for 20 years; permitting was completed in 2015. Urban School’s current student body of 420 students requires a larger space, and currently has no formal assembly space for students and teachers. They use the old Gumption Theater building on Page, with a maximum capacity of 80, which is completely inadequate for 420 students. The new performance space will host theatrical productions, musical theatre, jazz, classical and chorale performances, along with school assemblies. Construction is set to begin some time after Thanksgiving/December/January 2023. Dan has hosted three community meetings with immediate neighbors attending.
They envision that the new space will also be used as a community gathering space/dual purpose space for nonprofit and local community events. The existing buildings are owned by the Catholic Church; Urban School has leased them for the next 100 years. The new construction will take place within the existing “skin” of the old St. Agnes gymnasium; the construction team likens it to building a “ship in a bottle.” Currently Saint Agnes gym has no ADD accessible walkway; an old addition at the back of the gym will be removed to allow for a new ADD path from the street and around the periphery of the building. The project does not involve demolition of the main gym building or an increase in height or density. The architect and construction team state that the noisiest part of construction will likely be the removal of the rear portion of the gym and will take about two weeks to accomplish.
Although the building is not “historic,” they feel protective of the history of the building. Future use of the existing Gumption Theater space is undecided; it might become a dance studio or a maker space for a project based learning. HANC’s Board asked about parking on neighborhood streets during construction; workers are discouraged from using the neighborhood street parking. Cahill Construction was selected for the project because “compact urban construction” is their specialty. Cahill is currently looking at parking for workers at the Kezar lot on Stanyan. Cahill is contracted to monitor and enforce the parking agreement during construction. We asked about on site storage of construction vehicles and tools and were told that no heavy equipment will be stored on site because of the confines of the project and the extremely narrow access points to the site. Material “just in time” deliveries during construction are expected before 7 AM to avoid local traffic.
A webpage with information about the project which will also have project updates from Cahill Construction is located at https://www.urbanschool.org/neighbors/welcome-neighbors .