Beautiful $11,500,000 Renton High Science Center, completed last year, to be demolished

The top floor of the Science building in Renton High was remodeled in 2024 at a cost of 11.5 million dollars, and is now scheduled to be torn down as part of Renton High School replacement

Renton School District just used taxpayer bond proceeds that we approved in 2019 to complete a $11,500,000 upgrade in the science building of Renton High School.  The School Board is now making plans to tear this building down.

There are about 1,300 students at Renton High, attending for four years.  So during the approximately four years this Science Center will have a chance to be used, it will have cost about $8,800 per student to make this upgrade (11.5 million/1300 students).  Along with other pictures below, I’ve included a photo of the “before” condition of the science classrooms; they were remodeled in 2000 and certainly still look serviceable.

There are at least two major lessons to take away from this sequence of events.  First, School District leaders need to have a longer-term outlook when they spend our money, so they don’t waste millions of dollars like this on short term benefits. Second, the historic buildings at Renton High, which were significantly updated in a major remodel in 2000, could be completely modern with a remodel instead of a teardown.

The $11,500,000 spent on this remodel is 27% more money in adjusted dollars than we spent building the entire Henry Moses Aquatic Center, with it’s wave pool, lap pool, lazy river, water slides, pool house, and concessions.

The $11,500,000 is 77% of what we just spent building the new Family First Community Center.

I’ve included photos of our short-lived science center, along with more documents about the project, below.

For perspective, we built the entire Henry Moses Aquatic Center in 2002 for $5,000,000, which would be about $9,000,000 in today’s dollars

We built the new Family First Community Center for about $15,000,000

The budget for the project was $11,523,881 according to this presentation

New classrooms, per architect’s rendering here

Architect’s images of remodeled science center

Updated Science Center (from architect’s site)

Collaboration area in updated science center

Before the update, the classrooms looked like my college engineering labs, with room for equipment and connections for bunsen burners. These seem like they would have been fine for a few more years.

Construction underway in 2024 (Photo from Renton Hawkeye)

Work in progress (Photo from Renton Hawkeye)

Everything in blue is planned for demolition in a few years, including the new $11,500,000 Science Center on the back, left of building A. Only the small amount in red will remain, which includes only the IKEA Performing Arts Center and the brick facade of the old building.  See this plan for details.

The $11,500,000 Science Center will be replaced by the parking lot that says loading/service, above the IKEA Performing Art Center (IPAC) shown in pink. The white sections are new buildings. See this plan for details.