Hillcrest Elementary is gone; input sought on name for replacement school
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- The site where Hillcrest Elementary once sat at 130 N. Eccles Drive, photographed Wednesday, Oct. 4, 2023. Hillcrest was torn down and a new school is to be built in its place.
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- The site where Hillcrest Elementary once sat at 130 N. Eccles Drive, photographed Wednesday, Oct. 4, 2023. Hillcrest was torn down and a new school is to be built in its place.
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- The site where Hillcrest Elementary once sat at 130 N. Eccles Drive, photographed Wednesday, Oct. 4, 2023. Hillcrest was torn down and a new school is to be built in its place.
OGDEN — The old Hillcrest Elementary structure in northern Ogden is gone and moves to lay the footings and foundation for the replacement building edge ahead.
Meantime, with nearby Bonneville Elementary facing possible closure in the years to come, Ogden School District officials are surveying residents on what to name the new building to take shape where Hillcrest once sat. Should it be Hillcrest Elementary, same as before? Bonneville Elementary, in recognition of the nearby school that could meet the wrecking ball in the years to come? Something else?
School officials started pushing forward in earnest late last year with plans to replace the Hillcrest building, built in 1958, and it was demolished over the summer. The planned new structure, part of school modernization efforts in the district, is expected to cost around $47 million, with plans still being fine-tuned.
“Some details of the building plans are still being completed. Plans are expected to be finalized in November or December,” said Jer Bates, the district spokesperson.
At the same time, school officials have launched an online survey to help come up with a name and mascot for the school since the info could figure in some construction details. Hillcrest and Bonneville are proposed names, though officials are open to others. Proposed mascots are the Hawks or the Bobcats, the mascots of Hillcrest and Bonneville, though school officials are open to other options.
The new building at the Hillcrest site at 130 N. Eccles Drive is to open in time for the start of the 2025-2026 school year. In the interim, Bonneville, about a mile away, has opened its doors to former Hillcrest students.
Bonneville Elementary had the lowest enrollment of any elementary in the 2022-2023 school year, Bates said, and has space to handle the Hillcrest students. Bonneville housed some 290 students last year, and this year, with the Hillcrest influx, it is home to 540 kids.
“The building, with the use of portable classrooms on the premises, is able to adequately serve the current students,” Bates said.
Closure of Bonneville going forward is “definitely a possibility,” though, Bates said, hence the survey question proposing “Bonneville” as a potential name of the new school to sprout at the ex-Hillcrest site. School officials haven’t made a definitive decision on Bonneville’s future.
The new building on the ex-Hillcrest site will be a four-section school, able to accommodate four classes of each grade, similar to East Ridge Elementary, the new school at 1330 9th St. Polk Elementary, newly rebuilt at 2615 Polk Ave., and Liberty Elementary at 3290 Monroe Blvd., which replaced T.O. Smith Elementary, are three-section schools.
Ogden School District is facing declining student enrollment, which has figured in the closure of three schools in recent years. James Madison Elementary shut its doors at the end of the 2022-2023 school year, Taylor Canyon Elementary closed after the 2021-2022 school year and Gramercy Elementary closed at the end of the 2018-2019 school year.