Catholic high school off Tennyson breaks ground on $42M expansion

Before Arrupe Jesuit High School broke ground Wednesday on its much-needed expansion, Michael J. O’Hagan made sure that someone was there to bless the land.

“For the school to truly deliver on its mission, you’re asking for God’s blessing and that we remember we always work in a partnership,” said O’Hagan, the school’s president.

Situated just off bustling Tennyson Street at 4343 N. Utica St. in Denver’s Berkeley neighborhood, Arrupe Jesuit has raised north of $37 million for its planned two-story, 35,000-square-foot addition that will give the private school more classrooms and a new gymnasium.

“We’ve never had locker rooms, so if you are an athlete at Arrupe, you’ve changed in just about every classroom that we own,” O’Hagan said, speaking of the butcher paper that coaches bring in to cover up windows.

The school has no dedicated performing arts space, no class for its entrepreneurship course and limited honors programs for its roughly 415 students. The small gym prevents practices from running concurrently; athletes are forced to stay until late in the evening, and there’s no formal space for athletic trainers.

When the addition is complete, the school’s footprint will be approximately 100,000 square feet.

The project involves turning the existing gym space into new classrooms and the construction of a new pastor’s residence and offices for the Holy Family Catholic Church across the street. An old Holy Family building was torn down to make way for the addition.

Construction of the addition will wrap up by Christmas 2025, O’Hagan said. Renovations of the existing school should wrap up eight months after that.

In total, the entire redevelopment will cost $41.5 million. O’Hagan hopes he can increase class offerings, like adding coding, and expand the honors program in math, English and Spanish — reserved for seniors only – to juniors.