Notre Dame prepares for campus expansion project

By Andrew Junker | Sept. 3, 2009 | The Catholic Sun

SCOTTSDALE — After only eight years since its founding, Notre Dame Preparatory is getting ready to embark on a decades-long capital campaign that will provide the school with new classrooms, parking and athletic facilities.

“This all started about two years ago,” said David Gonsalves, principal of the Catholic high school. “We got together and did a little assessment of where we were and where we wanted to be. One of the offshoots of that strategic plan was to prepare the school for the future.”

That future includes growing the student body from nearly 950 young men and women to about 1,200, all while maintaining a small student-to-teacher ratio.

“We have some of the smallest class sizes in the area,” Gonsalves said. “It’s about 17 kids a class, and we hope to keep it that way.”

But expanding the campus presented some challenges to the school. Notre Dame, just south of Bell Road on 98th Street, comprises 36 acres and is contained on its west side by a city-owned wash.

In order to fit in everything they needed, the school had to consider some fairly out-of-the-box ideas, like putting in underground parking beneath the proposed football field, or building a five-story parking garage.

Not only were these plans incredibly expensive, but, in the instance of the five-story garage, they were also unpopular with the homeowners surrounding the school. At the same time, it didn’t seem like Notre Dame had any other options.

That’s when John Berry stepped in. He’s a local attorney who has children attending Notre Dame. He also specializes in real estate law, and was able to propose a solution to the school’s expansion challenges.

The answer lay in the empty, city-owned wash to the west of Notre Dame’s campus. While it would be unfeasible to build anything on the land, it’s a good place for parking lots and athletic practice fields.

“We had this meeting with the city and out of this meeting came the idea to see if we can’t work with them and use this previously thought unusable land to the west, this wash, and create the proverbial win-win situation,” Berry said. “This new plan saves us literally tens of millions of dollars at the end of the day.”

Berry is in talks with the City of Scottsdale on a joint-use venture for the land.

“Basically, they would contribute the real estate,” he said. “We would agree, when we expand, to build the parking.”

The proposed parking lot would also be accessible to the neighboring WestWorld, an equestrian center and special events facility. The city would be able to use Notre Dame’s parking lots when the school isn’t using them for extra parking at WestWorld.

Likewise, the two proposed athletic fields that would sit on the city land would be available for municipal soccer or baseball leagues.

“This just opens up the campus,” Berry said of the new plan.

The school hopes to file applications with the city in the next couple of weeks. These applications would modify Notre Dame’s existing use permit and allow the school to increase its student body to 1,200 students. They will also seek approval for the expanded campus site plan.

Finally, Berry is working on a development agreement with the city that will work out the sharing of the proposed facilities.

“We’re hoping to be at the city council for a yea or nay vote by the end of the year,” he said.

All told, Gonsalves expected the expansion project to cost about $80 million and take 25 years to complete, though he allowed that that estimate might be too conservative.

“We’ve been working on it for two years and now it’s about ready to take off,” he said.