The 325,000 SF Donald M. Payne, Sr. Vocational Technical School in downtown Newark, NJ is far and away Di Cara | Rubino’s flagship project. The new state-of-the-art Career and Technical Education (CTE) facility has over 85 classrooms and labs, numerous common areas, cafeteria, media center, gymnasium, and 800-seat auditorium, and can house up to 1,400 students. The project is seeking LEED Silver certification. The school was constructed on the site of the former United Hospital. Prior to construction, the existing buildings on site needed to be demolished and any environmental concerns had to be quickly and effectively remediated.

Recently completed on time and within budget, the project was immensely successful in terms of on-time design delivery, project management, and cost control. Clearly, a project of this size and importance presented unique challenges in planning, design, and coordination along the way. With so many stakeholders involved, skillful project management was vital. Through our collaborative design process, our team methodically evaluated the Essex County Vocational Technical Schools’ needs and performance criteria for the school and developed numerous design options to be evaluated by the County of Essex, ECVTS Board, and the community. The team worked under extremely tight timelines and external pressure to meet project milestones. Our cost- and schedule-conscious design process yielded clean and concise documents with limited agency review comments. Our design team utilized our proven in-house checklists for document content, code review, and quality review and coordination.