The Aug. 26 meeting regarding the new Dover High School’s design brought about more questions about height requirements, safety and access to the school. The height issue was brought about at the Aug. 5 meeting, and will come before the city’s Board of Adjustments at 10 a.m. Wednesday, Sept. 15, at Dover City Hall.
Currently, the site of the future high school is zoned for buildings no taller than 35 feet. The district would like to extend that height restriction to build higher and make the most of its acreage. A 35-foot cap also could hamper design elements such as pitched roofs, according to ABHA Architects’ Carl Krienen.
“It allows a lot less flexibility to design a building aesthetically,” he said.
Central Middle School, for example, is 44 feet tall to the eave, 56 feet to the ridge and 76 feet to the top of the cupola.
Former school board member Paul Fleming encouraged the district to get as much input on the design as possible. He suggested they speak to other schools with recent renovations, such as Smyrna High School and Caesar Rodney High School.
“What you’re building represents a once in a lifetime opportunity,” Fleming said. “We’ve suffered a long time with the design and building of the Dover High School. That’s a mess.”
Height and design were only two of the issues the public and organizers brought up.
Access to the school was a topic that carried over from the first meeting, with neighbors voicing concerns about road and pedestrian access to the school, and the unwelcome visitors it could invite in the pre-dawn hours.
The school’s current design has three entrances from a yet-to-be-built road on its western border, and one entrance strictly for buses off Route 8. According to Gregg Moore of Becker Morgan Group, all of these roads can be gated after school hours.
If the city demands a stump road from a bordering development be connected to the school’s western access road, however, that would be a public road and could not be gated.
“I’m not comfortable with a public road that goes onto our property,” said Superintendent Dr. Michael Thomas.
The concern with the potential connector road is that while it is meant for student access to the school, it could be used by anybody to enter the campus, Moore said.
The district will have to wait until the Sept. 15 meeting of the Board of Adjustments and a future session of the Dover Planning Commission to determine their height and access restrictions.
Fleming was one of several at the meeting who said they hoped the restrictions would not hinder plans for the new school.
“What we’re building we’re going to be stuck with for 50 years,” he said. “Dover should have the finest high school in the state — we’re the capital.”
Email Sarika Jagtiani at sarika.jagtiani@doverpost.com.
