Coral Gables Senior High School Construction Update

The COVID-19 pandemic has presented numerous issues and challenges to Miami-Dade County Public Schools.

However, one issue that has remained unaffected has been it’s renovations and construction at Coral Gables Senior High School.

By next month, the current phase of the project will be completed including the construction of the new building. This will be followed with the completion of the new courtyard in the Spring.

In a presentation made to the City’s School Community Relations Committee, Chief Facilities Officer Victor Alonso, explained that the next phase will be the renovations of the main campus building.

Through this process, the budget for the renovation have continued to grow, thanks in large part to the work of School Board Member Mari Tere Rojas. In December, it was announced, she had been able to secure an additional $11 million for the renovations of the school’s gym.

The additional funding will bring the total project costs to $43 million. The completion of the full project is expected to be sometime in 2024.

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3 thoughts on “Coral Gables Senior High School Construction Update

  1. Mr. Beegle,

    Do you realize that the band room has been torn down to make room for a new A/C chiller? The school currently has NO band room and NO plans for a new one. This is not right and is not what the public was expecting or promised.

    We need to wake up, stop being so pacifist and simply demand that Coral Gables High School be rebuilt. They show us a shiny new wing and we get all excited and forget about the rest of the school which is still falling apart, inadequate, ugly, energy inefficient and old.

    What state of denial are we in here??

  2. “It is not an historical building, there is nothing unique about its design and construction so stories claiming we have to preserve something, in this case, is just an excuse not to build a beautiful new school for our great city.”

    I disagree. I am Class of ’57, a member of the Band of Distinction and Orchestra. Two band classmates won Pulitzer Prizes in Music, composer/oboist Lewis Spratlan and the first woman recipient internationally know composer Ellen Taaffe Zwilich. An Olympic pole vaulter John Pennell played tuba in the band, a fact generally missing from his bio. There were twelve Merit Scholarship winners in my senior class alone. The football team beat all of the Big Three (Miami High, Edison and Miami Jackson) for the first time the Big Three became the Big Four. Across the board Gables students excelled.

    The design of the school was unique, a series of outdoor covered passageways and gardens, the “Space Ship” auditorium that echoed the cheers of the student body getting charged up for a big game (they were all big games), a band room with huge sliding doors that opened into a small amphitheater for impromptu concerts. The band and orchestra were among the best in the state as were the athletic and scholastic teams. For example future AG Janet Reno was president of the debate club. All of this from the class of ’56 and ’57.

    So buildings don’t make a difference? Building are a part of our history, a history that has been all but destroyed in the State of Florida where bigger/better/newer wins the day. Every time. Following the Florida model let’s tear down the White House and build a new one. It’s so old, so many remodels and think of the profits that the new building could bring.

    One more point- word has it that the school will eventually be torn down so the U of M can plop down a brand new football stadium. In that tiny footprint, imagine the huge parking lots, the stadium itself and the traffic on game day.

    I doubt if the folks on San Esteban will be too excited about that.

    (Personally I was a professional musicians and member of the US Navy Band in Washington, DC, a twenty seven year career in music that I owe to my foundation in music at Gables High.)

  3. Great! So we have one new wing. Now, what about the rest of the 75 year old school that is falling apart? Are we going to piece meal this thing? Think we can keep effectively remodeling a school designed with no air conditioning over and over again? Do you know that this proposed remodel for the rest of the campus will be the 10th major remodel since the school opened in 1950. You can only remodel so many times until all your doing is painting over problems. Classrooms are dark, with no windows since the windows were boarded up in the 90s. The infrastructure of the school is old and decrepid. Coral Gables needs a new school, deserves a new school and I think we are foolish to expect anything less. It is not an historical building, there is nothing unique about its design and construction so stories claiming we have to preserve something, in this case, is just an excuse not to build a beautiful new school for our great city. You know, like the one further south? Yes, our rival Palmetto. What a big nice shiny new school they got – a school that was 10 years newer than Gables when it was torn down and replaced with allotted with General Bond money. The same should have happened with Gables.

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