DPS Emergency Finance Manager Robert Bobb escorts parents, community members, along with MLK high school stakeholders, as they get their first look inside the new $46.4 million facility under construction in downtown Detroit. (Photo by HB Meeks/Tell Us Detroit)

Sneak Peek Inside the New MLK High School highlights Green Technology

By Karen Hudson Samuels/Tell Us Detroit

DETROIT (Tell Us Det) - Detroit Public School parents, students and faculty donned hard hats Monday afternoon for a sneak peek tour inside the new Martin Luther King Senior High School, now under construction.

A walk-thru of the $46.4 million dollar building showed off brightly painted hallways color-coded to let students to know their location, classrooms equipped with wireless technology, spacious study areas, a varsity gymnasium and excavation on a multi-lane swimming pool.

The new school building will also house a cyber café and media center. A glass façade was recently completed that faces southwest at Larned and McDougall, it is designed to open the building to the neighborhood. It also captures a large amount of natural light adding to MLK’s LEED Gold-certification as an energy efficient building.



The LEED green building certification program developed by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), encourages and accelerates global adoption of sustainable green building and development practices through a suite of rating systems that recognize projects that implement strategies for better environmental and health performance.

New athletic fields and a parking lot will replace the old MLK building which will be demolished except for the current auditorium and performing arts building, which will be remodeled. Throughout construction MLK students are attending classes in the existing facility.


Parents and community members at Martin Luther King, Jr. Senior High School, along with MLK high school stakeholders, get their first look inside the new $46.4 million facility under construction in downtown Detroit. (Photo by HB Meeks/Tell Us Detroit)

Once construction is complete by fall of 2011, the new MLK Senior High School will be a state-of the-at facility with a curriculum that emphasizes Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) to equip students with 21st century skills.

Funding for construction of a new MLK comes from $500.5 million in federal stimulus dollars achieved with voter approval in November of the Proposal S Bond Referendum.