After years of debate, new Hubble draws raves on first day

Parents always take pictures of their kids on the first day of classes.

But outside the new Hubble Middle School Tuesday morning, several parents made sure to snap a photograph or two of the building itself.

The opening of the school at 3S600 Herrick Road in Warrenville was worth remembering because it was the culmination of 16 months of construction and many years of debate and investigation.

"I can't even express in words how excited I am about this new school," Pam Nielsen said after dropping off her son for his first day of eighth grade. "Everybody worked very hard to get this new school done. It's everything we hoped for."

For more than five years, community groups debated whether Wheaton Warrenville Unit District 200 should construct a new Hubble or renovate the 84-year-old former high school building in downtown Wheaton.

Educate 200, the group that opposed the move, even raised concerns about the Herrick Road location because it's less than a half-mile away from a BP Amoco research facility.

The district commissioned environmental studies that found the roughly 18-acre site to be safe, however, and the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency gave it a green light, too.

Then in February 2008, voters gave District 200 permission to spend $8 million to buy the Herrick site and build the new $50 million facility. Construction started two months later.

The result is a 190,000-square-foot facility students, parents and teachers agree is very different from the former Hubble.

"It's so much nicer than the old one," said Kelly Jeffrey, a 13-year-old eighth-grader from Wheaton. "Everything just seems a lot more efficient."

Unlike its predecessor, the new Hubble was designed from the ground up to be a middle school.

Paul Pessetti of Legat Architects said a major goal was to build a school that meets the leadership in energy and environmental design standards established by U.S. Green Building Council.

"The best opportunity to do that is to incorporate it from the start when all of the mechanical systems and the shell of the building and everything can be designed to be very thermally efficient," said Pessetti, who was the lead designer.

So while Hubble's roughly 850 students have classrooms tailor-made to meet their educational needs, the rooms have multiple energy-efficient windows to "harvest daylight" and conserve energy.

Overall, the mechanical systems are expected to be 20 percent more efficient than standard systems and the plumbing is designed to lower water consumption by 30 percent, officials said.

Even though the new Hubble is smaller than the old one, the word students commonly used to describe it is "big."

Bill Farley, District 200's assistant superintendent of business operations, isn't surprised. Officials wanted the building to feel "open and airy."

"It's definitely what we wanted," Farley said. "You look at the renderings of how this was designed, and it's just amazing how close it is."

Eighth-grader Tim Canavan said the building reminds him of Wheaton Warrenville South High School. "It gets you used to having a bigger school," the 13-year-old Wheaton resident said.

Seventh-grader Rob Buxton said he prefers the new layout to the old Hubble.

"The classrooms are way easier to get to," said Rob, 12, of Wheaton, as he stuffed supplies into his locker. "They are all together."

Parent Art Ramirez said he agrees the new building is easier to navigate.

"The other school was very old," the Warrenville resident said. "This one is modern. It looks nice. I would give it a grade of A-plus."

<div class="infoBox"> <h1>More Coverage</h1> <div class="infoBoxContent"> <div class="infoArea"> <h2>Video</h2> <ul class="video"> <li><a href="/multimedia/?category=9&type=video&item=394">Views from the first day of school at Hubble </a></li> </ul> </div> </div> </div>