Morrissey Boulevard in Dorchester is seeing a surge in development with a massive office and residential complex in the works for the former Bayside Expo Center site, and the former Boston Globe building emerging as a hospitable home for biotech companies.

Last week, Boston College High School, the private Catholic educational institution founded in 1863 in the South End before it moved to 40 acres on Columbia Point in 1954, laid out its own $100 million expansion plan.

The three-phase agenda includes renovating the school’s stadium, building a learning lab and “innovation hub,” expanding locker rooms and creating a wellness center, and siting a hockey rink and swimming pool on the harborside campus.

The “innovation hub” would be located in the middle of the scholastic space; the wellness center and swimming pool would be added to the north and east sides of the McNeice gymnasium; and the hockey rink would be south of the stadium close to the rodeway entrance to the UMass Boston campus.

“We want to make sure our boys have the best facilities. We want to marry the physical with the philosophical,” said Grace Cotter Regan, president of the high school.

Plans also call for a softening along the edges of the school property campus, through landscaping, welcome signage, and fencing along Morrissey Boulevard.

Cotter Regan, who took over as president in 2017, said school officials have been working with their Columbia Point neighbors as they discuss the look and feel of Boston College High School going forward.

The school recently replaced its athletic field, which is named for Cotter Regan’s father, the late James E. Cotter, a Savin Hill native who worked at BC High for fifty years as a teacher, coach, athletic director, and administrator. That property will be completely reconstructed with new stands, new bathroom facilities and new concession areas, according to Cotter Regan. The stadium reconstruction is part of the first phase.

The school also plans to implement a new “house system,” with 12 heads of house, with 85 to 100 students per house, for the 2022-23 academic year. The heads of house initiative is meant to offer students mentorship opportunities, school officials say. The head of a house will have the responsibility of team leadership, and will be supported by the dean of students and the vice principal of students.

BC High has a student enrollment of 1,500 in grades 7 to 12 from 140 communities in Massachusetts. Roughly 100 of them live in Dorchester and Mattapan.

“Our House System [will be] a way to make a large school like ours feel smaller,” said school principal Adam Lewis. “By creating a ‘community within the community,’ each boy is known and his ‘story’ and experience is fully understood, appreciated, and valued. When boys are known and loved – and they really feel supported – they will learn better, they will lead better, and they will develop stronger, deeper, and more supportive relationships and connections.”

The announced goals are all part of a five-year strategic plan that, according to Fr. Michael McFarland, chair of BC High’s board of trustees, focuses on four elements: a powerful formative student experience that integrates care and learning; a commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion; access and affordability for students and families of all backgrounds; and financial stability and sustainability.”

Morrissey Boulevard is seeing a surge in development, with “Dorchester Bay City” developers embarking on a 20-year effort to add residential and office complexes at the former Bayside Expo Center and on the property across the street where Santander Bank is currently leasing space.
UMass Boston, another neighbor, has overhauled its harborside campus over the last decade, relocating utilities and opening an integrated sciences complex with research and training labs, dorms, and an academic building with chemistry labs and a performing arts department.