Park City School District administrators are considering converting the high school’s old wood shop into a teen center — a place where laundry services, a food pantry, a kitchenette, offices for counseling, study spaces and a safe environment would be available for students.

According to Chief Student Services Officer Carolyn Synan during Tuesday’s Board of Education Meeting, Davis School District currently has 11 teen centers in its high schools, and 53 schools across the state are looking to fund similar projects.

Synan said the district has received a Utah State Board of Education grant for $250,000 and a Secured Policy Project grant for $30,000 in opening the facility, so long as they do so on or before June 30, 2025.

“I was lucky enough to tour one of the Davis ones,” Synan said. “They’re amazing. … They made it a point to say to us it really needs to feel free from the office.”

With that in mind, award-winning Park City High School Principal Roger Arbabi reached out to her and suggested using the school’s wood shop.

When asked where the drive for a teen center was coming from, Synan said she saw the grant possibility and thought, why not?

“Through these OCR reviews, there’s some stories of, ‘I want a space,'” she said. “We don’t currently have this kind of space.”

Superintendent Gildea said teen centers have been a state initiative. 

“It is something that came through state Legislature and state funding,” she said.

In its 2023 session, Utah legislators set aside $15 million for grant winners to establish teen centers in communities throughout Utah.

Synan said she didn’t know of the initiative until relatively late in the game, and the 2025 deadline for utilizing the grants will likely stand firm.

“This was an extension,” she clarified. “Originally it was ’24.”

According to public documents about the possible center, the total project would cost the school district over $1.3 million, which equates to $373.50 per square foot of the center.

About $600,000 of the total amount would go to renovations and changing the building’s current infrastructure to be within modern regulations for the proposed center. 

“Basically, it’s taking an existing space that has to be brought up to code anyway and using it for a space that we have for our students,” Gildea said.

Even given the grants that would help pay for the project, board members were wary of the price tag.

“If we had unlimited resources today, absolutely,” Board Vice President Wendy Crossland said. “We have limited resources. We’re in the middle of a massive construction masterplan.”

Board Member Nick Hill asked if there are any other possible spaces that could be used.

Gildea said they had considered three different areas.

“The architects did identify this as a good space,” she said.

Park City School District Technical Specialist Jason Jensen, however, identified a few concerns he had with using the old wood shop.

“Based on the paperwork that is on the school’s website and looking at the line item breakdown, one of the things that is not included in that $1.3 million is any plumbing. And there’s certainly no water facilities at that location,” Jensen said. “I have a hard time believing that $1.3 (million) is really accurate based on that.”

He also said the old shop is connected to the Eccles Center, which is frequently rented out to professional groups for periods of time. He worried this proximity would cause the same effect on anxious students as having them walk through the entire school building.

“They would be in and around that whole area,” he said.

He felt that proper consideration was not being given to the project, important as it may be.

Board President Andrew Caplan said he believed the building did have some form of plumbing and asked organizers to clarify whether or not the needed water infrastructure was included in the total cost.

Synan said the other two considered locations were an area upstairs — which she said would be difficult for anxious kids who would need to walk through the whole building to get to the center — and where the school’s administrative offices currently sit. 

She said Arbabi wasn’t very keen on moving administrators upstairs.

Ultimately, board members asked Synan to provide more alternatives in the future.

“Let’s put it on the agenda for next meeting,” Caplan said.

Arbabi said classes currently held in the shop will be moved to the school’s CTE wing.

Correction: A previous version of this story erroneously reported the shop is not currently in use by the school.