The outside of Arrupe High School as seen last month. The school is hoping to move forward with a major 35,000-square-foot addition to its campus. (Matt Geiger/BusinessDen)
Last year at Arrupe Jesuit High School, three-quarters of the students graduating were the first in their family to do so. All of them were accepted into college.
“This is the American dream played out on Utica Street,” said Michael J. O’Hagan, president of the Catholic school.
But to continue that dream, the school needs space, and it needs it fast. The private college-prep academy faces a 23,000-square-foot deficit for its current enrollment of 418 kids. Students change for gym in classrooms — not locker rooms — and play instruments in the computer lab and, for a time, bathrooms, because they have the best acoustics.
“While I admired their ingenuity, we ultimately decided it was a little too creepy,” O’Hagan said of the latter.
On Monday evening, the school will go before the Denver City Council seeking approval of a rezoning that will enable it to embark on a project O’Hagan expects to cost $42 million. Arrupe said it will allow the school to boost its total enrollment to 500 students in the next few years, bringing in an additional 15 students with each freshman class.
The school, which sits on about an acre of land at 4343 N. Utica St. in Berkeley, just steps away from Tennyson Street, is planning for a two-story, 35,000-square-foot addition, which would bring the building to about 100,000 square feet.
School President Michael J. O’Hagan, right, stands next to Chad Cookinham, who runs Arrupe’s work study program. O’Hagan himself received a Jesuit and Catholic education, attending Regis High School in New York and the University of Notre Dame. Cookingham, meanwhile, has degrees from Dartmouth and the University of Michigan. (Matt Geiger/BusinessDen)
Plans call for a new gym with locker rooms, along with a fitness room. A new main entrance, science classrooms, boardroom, student gathering space, offices and restrooms round out the new space. The project will also include renovating parts of the existing school building — and constructing a new rectory for the church across the street.
O’Hagan said the whole project had been priced at $30 million before the pandemic and an increase in construction costs.
“For $42 million, you’d think we were building the Taj Mahal,” he said. “We’re not. It’s a modest residence, a modest office, a two-story addition and then some renovations – but that’s how it goes these days.”
The deal calls for Arrupe to first swap property with Holy Family Catholic Church across the street. The parish owns an old rectory north of the school that will come down to make way for the new addition. In return, the school will give the church a small residential property it owns next to it, and demolish it and an adjacent abandoned convent. It will then construct a new 9,000-square-foot rectory, which provides housing for priests, that the church will own.
A rendering of Arrupe’s planned addition. MOA Architecture, a Denver firm, is the project architect. Centennial-based Haselden is working as the general contractor. (Courtesy Arrupe Jesuit High School)
Once completed, the parish and the school will be contiguous. The church will have the east side of the street and the school will have the west.
“The expansion is really the gym, and an updated STEM wing because we have so many kids who really excel in nursing and engineering. … The remodel is where we build out the classroom space that allows us to drive enrollment,” O’Hagan said.
In total, 12 new classrooms will be built where the old gym once stood.
As of Friday, the school has raised about $34 million. It wants to have 90 percent of the funds raised by the time shovels hit the dirt and bulldozers start tearing down the buildings. O’Hagan said he hopes demolition will kick off this summer, and construction this fall, and that the project will be completed by early 2026.
The current gym at the school will eventually become 12 new classrooms. A new one will be built as part of the addition. (Matt Geiger/BusinessDen)
‘The building should remind the kids of their dignity’
Arrupe was founded on Utica Street in 2003. Before, the building was used by the neighboring parish as a K-12 school.
“The whole mission of the school at the time was we wanted to be available to families who were looking for a college-preparatory Catholic alternative to what was available to them, but for whom tuition was probably going to be just a financial impediment,” said O’Hagan, who was the school’s first principal. He served in that role until 2018.
In its first year, the school enrolled 62 students.
“When we took over this building, (a) great, lovely community really embraced us,” O’Hagan said. “But you know, the exterior of the building was sheet metal and single pane glass for 10, 11 years. My guys were here building out the school. There was no air conditioning. Heat was limited. It was a tough circumstance.
“The building should remind the kids of their dignity.”
The Chapel in Arrupe High. “If I were to name the single best thing Arrupe does, I think it’s we help restore kids to a vision of themselves – a version of themselves – that God intended, before all the challenges of life kind of descended upon them,” O’Hagan said. (Matt Geiger/BusinessDen)
Since 2003, the school has added numerous classrooms and facilities for its students.
“We slowly built out and we got to about 2011, 2012, we were about 250 kids,” O’Hagan said. We thought we could do better, so we did a modest expansion in kind of 2014, 2015, we built to the south … we built a cafeteria and we put a second floor with more classrooms that allowed us to grow from about 275 to around 420 where we are now.”
About 93 percent of Arrupe students are Hispanic. The average income for a family of four is around $46,000 a year. Tuition cost $3,450 for this school year. O’Hagan said no families pay full price, but everyone pays something.
Arrupe’s work-study program makes the school stand out, O’Hagan added. Students work five days a month outside the school, at places like Ball Corp., Newmark, Denver Health and Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck.
“I think by the time you get to senior year, you know, our guys have a depth to them and a maturity and perspective that anyone who visits this place tells you it’s different – that there’s something about Arrupe that is special to them,” O’Hagan said.
The school expects to make about $3 million next year from student’s work. In fact, about a third of the school’s funding comes from wages made by the students. Tuition accounts for only five percent, while fundraising provides more than half. Students don’t keep the money they make, but many find work with their employer during winter, spring and summer breaks. Then, they can earn money for themselves.
So far, the school’s model has proven successful. Since its inception, 1,267 students have graduated, with some attending Ivy League universities.
“I always describe our place as a place of dreams,” O’Hagan said.
