Next year Boston will break ground on a new campus for the Josiah Quincy Upper School (JQUS) at 249 Harrison Ave.
The site is currently home to the Boston Chinese Evangelical Church, which agreed to sell to the city last year.
JQUS opened in 1999, and serves a diverse student body, of which half are Asian. It offers an International Baccalaureate (IB) program and Mandarin Chinese to all grades, 6 –12 Currently, students are spread across two sites, a building at 152 Arlington Street and modular classrooms a quarter mile away at 249 Harrison/900 Washington Street The new facility will be across the street from the Josiah Quincy Elementary School at 885 Washington Street.
“It will be the most expensive school built in the history of Boston,” said Patrick Brophy, Mayor Walsh’s Chief of Operations, at Tuesday’s design meeting. The project is budgeted at $193 million, including about $52 million in state aid.
$8.55
million will be used to refurbish and expand learning space in the
Arlington building. A student lounge will be converted to a classroom
and the cafeteria will be expanded.
This “swing space” will house the entire staff and student body of JQUS for the three-year construction.
Preparations
for the move are expected to last two months; and will be ready for the
2021-22 school year. Main construction will then begin that September,
and last until August 2024.
The "swing space” will be too small for
social distancing. If COVID-19 restrictions persist into next fall, the
school would implement a hybrid model of mixed in person and remote
classes.
The new campus will have seven floors and rise 116 feet. It
will have a full court gymnasium, 450-seat auditorium, and black box
theater, which will be available for community use on weekends.
The roof will include green space for classes and athletics, a student garden, and a small solar array.
The
building is designed to be fully wireless; each classroom will include a
50-inch flat screen display. But many of the specifics of technology
and fixtures are still to be decided. Technology changes so quickly that
school leaders won’t start shopping until construction is well
underway.
Safety is a big focus. The ventilation system will have a
state-of-the-art MERV-14 filter, primarily designed for scrubbing air
pollution. But it can switch to low speed “pandemic mode”, said Pip
Lewis of HMFH Architects.
Other safety features include a single, controlled entranceway with damage resistant glass.
Classrooms
are laid out with “hiding space” and will lock from the inside. While
opening day is years away, some students are already looking forward to
it.
“There
were so much fear and uncertainty, but I was able to overcome the fear
and the uncertainty and learn to adapt to new environments and survive,”
Agoun said. She hopes that this can do attitude can help her continue
to make a living selling upscale clothing as the pandemic and associated
recession continue.
The last time that a recession hit in 2008,
Agoun seized the opportunity. The recession had cut real estate prices,
which let her buy her second, larger space on Charles Street, a location
she had always admired for its “beauty, elegance and sophistication.’’
For now, she’s brushing up on her digital skills and sprucing up Soodee’s online presence.
Because
Agoun usually keeps a limited supply of each item in stock, her stores’
business model wasn’t easily convertible to an online format.
Before
the pandemic, she didn’t rely on online sales because she couldn’t
update the site to match the clothing available in stores.
Instead of
treating the store’s redesigned website like a typical e-commerce site,
she decided to treat it more like a store window, to preview new styles
at Soodee and entice customers to visit, safely, in person.
She’s
also learned to better coordinate the site’s content with Facebook and
Instagram to keep her customers abreast of the latest arrivals.
Agoun
has also partnered with local social media influencers, photographers
and models to cross-promote each other’s content, and has started
offering customers private shopping experiences to reduce potential
exposure to Covid-19.
The hope is that customers still feel safe
coming into Soodee because what makes it special is “the human
experience, the connection and the relationship I make with my
customers.’’
Agoun cited examples of
women whom she’s helped dress for years, including one who invited
Agoun to her Harvard Business School graduation.
She reminded the
women at the event that in the face of the pandemic, dressing well can
help boost spirits. “You can still feel fabulous while attending
meetings in Zoom,” she said on the video call.
“When you dress better, you will feel better.”
And
although she thinks “we don’t have fashion in 2020;” for 2021, she
predicts “very colorful, very vibrant” clothes will be trending to
“bring some energy [to] this world. That’s what we need.”
