When Westside School chose to move to their newest location, the former Hillcrest Church in Arbor Heights, it meant one thing. How to repurpose an existing structure and aim it at the future for children for decades to come?

The school, founded in 1981, has been in several places in the community, sharing space with Explorer West for a few years, before moving to E.C. Hughes for the last five years. Now after 13 and a half months of construction and many months in planning before that, and $15.5 million, it's getting ready for next fall when some 350 students will arrive. The administrators expect this to be Westside School's permanent home. They get their certificate of occupancy on June 12. The new school is located 10004 34th Ave. SW.

The 1975 structure required significant upgrades to make it suitable for the school's purposes but it had some elements that made it ideal said Head of School Kate Mulligan. "One was the gym, and the other was the Sanctuary which we have turned into our classroom buildings and on the very top floor a theater. So we are able to get from this building things that most Pre-K through 8th grade schools who are just acquiring their first permit, don't necessarily get the chance to build." Now, after $9 million in remodeling has been done, the school is nearing its opening in Sept. But first an Pre-K open house for the neighbors and those interested in enrolling their children at Westside is set to take place Saturday April 25 at their present home at E.C. Hughes school at 7740 34th Ave. SW from 10am to 12pm.

The school will offer 53,000 square feet, 27 classrooms (an expansion of four more classrooms from their present location), a gym, a performing arts center, a dining room, a tech design lab, two art rooms and specially outfitted classrooms for Pre-K and K students.

10 classrooms will occupy the bottom level, nine on the middle floor, plus two language classrooms (teaching Mandarin Chinese and Spanish) and two more classrooms on top floor plus some music rehearsal spaces.

The facility was built, "as green as possible" said Don Cunningham, Assistant Head of School with LED lighting, solar panels, heat pumps, natural lighting (with the help of the UW Integrated Design Lab), and wherever possible the re-use of materials and structures in other areas. For example in the gym, two large glue lam columns were removed, structural reinforcement added, and those pieces will be reused, as benches. Other pieces will be used as stair treads.

On the lower floor a full dining room is now in place, with a catering kitchen (food is prepared off site by a vendor and brought in) and that room features garage door style openings that in good weather will open out on to both a hardscape playground of about 10,000 square fee and green scape playground that extends around the perimeter.

A central courtyard, with paths, benches, low concrete walls and some landscaping sits in the middle of the school.

Students at Westside will enjoy broadband internet access, with wi-fi distributed throughout the school and one to one iPads in place for middle school students to use. "The tech design of this building supports our 21st Century learning initiative," said Mulligan. "We have a maker space and a tech lab upstairs and middle school students will be learning robotics, video editing, programming, and coding Tech instruction begins as early as a pre-K.

The teaching at Westside often involves teaching teams of two with for example in middle school a STEM Teacher and a Humanities Teacher In the younger grades Westside h.as a lead teacher and a Teaching Assistant with a maximum class size of 20.

The theater space on the top floor will be busy with the school's own productions and performances and at this point while the desire is there, it's too soon administrators say to commit to sharing the theater space with other groups in the community. "That may happen," said Mulligan, "We'd like to support the community."

Skylights have been cut into the theater area bringing in a lot of natural light, the stage is large, and ADA access has been added.

The neighborhood around the school has been supportive of the school's move and administrators said they took great pains to keep the impacts on traffic and parking minimal.

We did extensive studies as part of our DPD planning, "said Cunningham, "and we operate primarily between the hours of 8 and 4. We have two events a day, we have drop off and pickup. We have a fair amount of cars that happen in relatively short compressed time. What the engineers did was to make sure that almost all of our queueing takes place on our own property in two lanes, and the queueing will happen on 32nd SW where no homes front."

On site they will have 68 parking spaces, plus an additional 25 nearby and an agreement with a nearby church for any overflow.

"A school is a really positive thing to have in a community setting," said Mulligan.

With a long history in West Seattle Westside School is preparing their new home to be both a highly valued community asset and a modern home for high level focused education.

For more information visit http://westsideschool.org