Architects unveil $53 million renovation plans for Allentown’s Bridgeview Academy

The $53 million renovation plans for Allentown’s Bridgeview Academy feature exterior window lighting designed to look like circuit boards in an attempt to make the building a “billboard for innovation.”

The theme-based Bridgeview Academy has relaunched with a focus on artificial intelligence, health care and computer science, and the construction of a new academic wing will allow the school to expand to host 875 students in grades 6 to 12.

“I feel like this is futuristic — I feel like this is a building that’s going to prepare our students for the future,” school board President Andrene Brown-Nowell said during Thursday’s review of the design plans.

In addition to constructing a new, two-story academic building, plans include renovating the existing building and adding a high-school-sized gym that can also function as an auditorium.

The athletic addition will be built to the north of the existing building, along Union Street, alongside the soon-to-be-constructed Family and Community Resource Center. The new academic building will be built to the south, along the front of the existing building.

The Family and Community Resource Center is scheduled to be completed at the end of 2026. Construction would then begin on the Bridgeview Academy academic and athletic additions in spring 2027, with a completion date of summer 2029.

“We want big open spaces for learning to occur,” said Michael Kelly of KCBA Architects, explaining that the design plans allow for both expanded classroom space and an outdoor collaboration area.

Kelly, a 1993 Allen High School graduate, said he envisions the renovated building as a space in which students could work in an engineering lab and then take their drones for a test flight inside the building.

One of the building’s STEM labs is scheduled to be esports-themed. The district is also working with local partners to construct health and biology labs.

The site is unusual in that it already has an excess of parking, Kelly said, adding that part of the existing parking area will be converted into green space bordering Martin Luther King Jr. Drive.

KCBA Architects are consulting with the planners of the Family and Community Resource Center to make sure that the completed site has complementary exteriors.

‘We want this building to glow and literally be a billboard for innovation,” Kelly said.