The District 202 Board of Education unanimously approved a $2.5 million first phase of expansion to the Evanston Township High School’s Arts and Innovation wing at the board’s April 7 meeting.
This phase of construction, which will include creating a studio theater and renovations to the existing part of the wing, will start this summer. The studio theater will replace the high school’s current “little theater,” and will be a black box style performing arts space.
This construction phase will also expand a vestibule off the wing, add an orchestra classroom to meet growing music education needs and straighten out a currently disjointed hallway in the wing to set up for future enhancements.
The project will be overseen by Chicago-based construction firm Bulley and Andrews, who worked with the district to bid out each piece of construction to contractors.
The board of education saw draft renderings for this studio theater and the other changes on the docket from architects at a board meeting last fall, when they discussed the district’s five year capital improvement plan.
Other items on the agenda, but not yet approved but in the school’s capital plan, include a new culinary arts space, visual arts space and expansion of the current main auditorium’s lobby area.
Much of the funding for these kinds of capital improvement projects comes from gifts made to the ETHS Foundation. The foundation is in a quiet phase of fundraising for more of these massive school changes, but said in October they hope to have 50% of their total for the expansion donated by May of this year.
District 202 approves $2.5 million expansion of ETHS Arts and Innovation Wing is from Evanston RoundTable, Evanston's most trusted source for unbiased, in-depth journalism.