Mayor Wu said Tuesday that her administration will seek state approval and funding to help build a new or heavily renovated facility for the aging Madison Park Technical Vocational High School campus in Roxbury.

In a letter to city councillors on Monday, the mayor requested council approval to begin the application process with the Massachusetts School Building Authority (MSBA) before a filing deadline in April.

There is no guarantee that the state authority will approve the city’s funding request, although the city of Boston has seen success in recent grant cycles. Last year, its application for state funding to build a new campus for Dorchester’s Ruth Batson Academy was the latest BPS project to earn an invite to the process.

A new facility to house the merged Shaw-Taylor School on the Dorchester-Mattapan line gained an invitation in 2023.

The full cost of rebuilding Madison Park is not yet known, but preliminary estimates range as high as $750 million, according to city sources. The campus on Malcolm X Boulevard near Roxbury Crossing was built in the 1960s and has become increasingly outdated, in part, because the building’s poured concrete construction is not conducive to modern technology, such as wi-fi.

“This campus has been a beacon for decades, but over time, the facilities haven't gotten the reinvestment that's needed to make sure it's the most modern and updated platform for our students and for our industries to be plugged in,” Wu said after she toured the property on Tuesday morning.

She added: “We've been working for over a year now with community members to have a real visioning process for what a modern, updated, beautiful Madison Park campus should be, and we're taking the first steps in decades to make that a reality by putting forth some of the designs and feedback and then entering a process to apply for funding from the state as well that would allow us to move this project forward.”

An invitation into the MSBA process is a first step, and does not generate a fixed budget or cost, and does not ensure that it will advance to construction. A successful MSBA project usually includes shared costs between the state and city.

On Tuesday, Wu said that the application to the MSBA would focus strictly on the Madison Park campus and not the John D. O’Bryant School of Math & Science campus next door.

“We know that there are some spaces that are shared, and so as those spaces would be updated, the O'Bryant community would also benefit from [being] fully modernized, whether it's the gym or other shared locations in the buildings that provide spaces for both,” she said. “But this project will be focused on Madison.”

James E. Rooney, president and CEO of the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce, said he agreed with “the mayor’s approach to seek state support through the MSBA to provide such a facility.

“Career vocational/technical education is an essential piece of the city’s workforce development strategy and provides a critical pathway to economic opportunity for its residents,” Rooney said in a statement. “This strategy enhances the city’s ability to secure the necessary resources for a high quality… education and a curriculum to realize students’ full potential.”

At-large City Councillor Henry Santana, a close Wu ally and chair of the City Council’s Education Committee, called the application a “critical step toward ensuring the school has the modern facilities needed for hands-on, career-focused education.”

City Councillor Tania Fernandes Anderson, who has been critical of past Wu initiatives on the campus in her District 7, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The deadline for submitting “statements of interest” to the MSBA is April 11. Typically, the agency evaluates submissions and takes site visits throughout the year. Invitations are announced to successful applicants at the agency’s December meeting.

“We are going to work very hard to make the case here for Madison Park,” Wu said. “We've had a really strong partnership with the MSBA and funding for several schools that are in progress in Boston. So, we've been able to accelerate school construction renovation, where there are more projects now in the pipeline and underway than in the last 40 years.”

Zenobia Pellissier Lloyd contributed to this story.