Cape Community Celebrates Groundbreaking of New School

By Georgia Leonhart
Cape Gazette staff

Drizzle and a chill in the air couldn’t dampen the joyful spirits of more than 100 people who gathered for the new Cape Henlopen High School groundbreaking ceremony Thursday afternoon, April 19.

Recognizing the efforts that led up to the moment and anticipating hard work and challenges to come, the crowd was filled with the promise of witnessing the creation of something wonderful.

“This represents the results of tireless efforts of hundreds of people,” said Cape Superintendent George Stone. “It was an uphill struggle since the day the decision to build a new school was made, and now we’re on the top of the hill.”

“We are creating a state-of-the-art school building that will be here for our children, our grandchildren and for our great-grandchildren,” Stone said, looking toward the future.

Cape Henlopen High School Principal John Yore also looked at the present. “The new building will be magnificent, but the true heart of a school lies in its people and we already have magnificent people,” he said.

Yore acknowledged the contributions of the school’s color guard and JROTC members in the day’s celebration, the students attending Cape now and today’s fifth-graders like his own daughter, who will be the first class to attend the new school for all four years of high school.

“The heart of this community is big, and we are grateful” he said.

New school plans

“This is a joyous event and all of you should be proud. We at BSA+A are truly proud,” said architect Buck Simpers, whose company, Buck Simpers Architect + Associates, designed the new school.

The 210,000-squar- foot building has a Jeffersonian design and will include 46 classrooms, a ninth grade academy, dedicated areas for the Sussex Consortium, a library designed to allow public access and a media center, Simpers said.

“You are standing in the gymnasium,” said Alan Redford, vice president of the construction management firm EDiS Company. “When we come back to take another photo in three years you will be in the bleachers,” he added, pointing to landmarks to describe the general size and shape of the building. “The basketball court is the cafeteria,” he said.

The new school is scheduled to be completed in three years and Cape students will start attending the new high school in September, 2010.

“Next week we start putting up the fences and sediment control measures. Within one month we’ll be digging for the building,” said Redford.

Many worked hard

School board President Gary Wray thanked the hundreds of people involved in the process, the school board members and the taxpayers of the Cape Henlopen School District. “This is really not for us, it’s for the kids of Cape Henlopen,” Wray said.

Assistant Superintendent Janis Hanwell, who has been the liaison between the district officials, BSA+A and EDiS for the past year, said she is elated that construction is about to begin. The process really began in 1996, she told the crowd, adding that it was formalized with the creation of a facilities task force in 2003 that had its first meeting in 2004.

Among the dignitaries attending the groundbreaking ceremony were Sen. Gary Simpson, R-Milford, and Lewes council members Ted Becker and Barbara Vaughan. School board members Gary Wray, Estelle Parker-Selby, Camilla Conlon, Noble Prettyman and Allan Redden attended, as did many district representatives.

Also attending were many of the original facilities task force members and 15 high school student representatives.