PROVO — Meridian School headmaster Dave Hennessey has said that he is educating students in a building that's on borrowed time.
Now, the private school has officially borrowed another year in that building.
The owners of the school property, at 931 E. 300 North in Provo, will allow the school to stay on premises through May 2006.
The school is just blocks from the Brigham Young University campus, and the owners plan to raze the building for student apartments. They previously told school administrators they needed to be out by this spring.
But Meridian parents and administrators have raised only about $150,000 of the $6.5 million needed for a new school that's slated to be built at the old Geneva Steelworkers Park site near Utah Valley State College.
"When it became apparent that we were not raising the funds to make our groundbreaking deadline, we knew we had to look at other options. Certainly this is the best option because it doesn't involve moving and storing supplies and equipment," Hennessey said.
Meridian administrators and parents plan to use the additional time to raise more money and seek investors who would construct a building that the school would lease.
They hope to begin construction in January 2006 to avoid the need for temporary space to house students or store equipment and supplies, Hennessey said.
Meridian School started in 1989 in the building on 300 North in Provo, formerly part of St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Church complex.
The school leased the property from the Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake City until 1996, when a group of parents purchased it, Hennessey said.
The parents didn't make a profit on the property and sold it to the present owners about four years ago.
The new building will be designed to accommodate 315 students. The school's population currently hovers around 220 students, but administrators anticipate a return to a larger population that decreased after the most recent recession and uncertainty over the school's location, Hennessey said.
"We expect to grow ourselves back to about that number and keep the community sense of this school, which we have partly because we are a pre-kindergarten through 12 (in one) building," he said.
BYU administrators recently reduced the boundaries for approved housing to bring students closer to the main campus. As a result, students that lived in areas as far away as west Orem are having to move closer to campus, and multiple developments have gone up in the area to meet the demand.
E-mail: lhancock@desnews.com