An aging school in St. Paul Park will have a new $72 million home.
Oltman Middle School will be moving onto 57 acres in a new building on Cottage Grove. The South Washington County school board approved paying $5.1 million for the site at a meeting last month.
Mike Vogel, the school district’s assistant to the superintendent for operations, said on Friday that groundbreaking will be in October, and students will begin attending in fall 2018.
The school was made possible last November when voters approved spending $96 million for improvements to the district’s four middle schools. In addition to the new Oltman building, the money will pay for a 10-classroom expansion at Woodbury Middle School and improvements at Lake Middle School in Woodbury and Cottage Grove Middle School.
The new Oltman school will be a big improvement, Vogel said.
Oltman was built as an elementary school in 1951 and has been remodeled and expanded several times, at one point serving as the original home of Park High School, now in Cottage Grove.
Enrollment at the existing Oltman school is declining, Vogel said. Its capacity is 900 students, smaller than the 1,100-student capacity of the new school.
Oltman’s new location will be superior, he said. The property at Geneva Avenue and 65th Street is in the far northwest part of Cottage Grove, abutting Newport and St. Paul Park. It is a quarter-mile south of Woodbury.
That makes it more centrally located, said Vogel, and closer to fast-growing parts of Woodbury and Cottage Grove.
The new school will have several features that the old school lacks:
- An auditorium and lecture hall.
- A bright, airy lunchroom. The present Oltman lunchroom is in the basement, in a dark and low-ceiling area, Vogel said.
- A modern swimming pool. The present-day pool at Oltman is not suitable for competition, with only five lanes, no diving well and no room for spectators.
- Modern classrooms. They will be clustered around common areas, said Vogel, where students will be able to meet with teachers and other students.
Vogel said the district plans to demolish the original 1951 part of the St. Paul Park building.
The remaining 100,000 square feet will be used as the home of Nuevas Fronteras, the district’s Spanish immersion program.
The land was sold to the district by Bailey Nurseries.
At $90,000 per acre, it’s a comparative bargain for the district. Recent land purchases by nearby school districts range from $147,000 per acre in the Rosemount-Apple Valley-Eagan district to $94,000 to $130,000 an acre in the Maplewood-Oakdale-North St. Paul district to $80,000 in the Stillwater district.
This story includes material from Forum News Service.