Arrupe Jesuit High School in Northwest Denver has opened the first phase of a $43 million campus expansion, giving students a new gym, updated science labs, fresh classrooms and a modern entrance to start the spring semester. The milestone caps years of planning for the small Catholic college-prep school, which serves a student body that is overwhelmingly first in their families to pursue higher education.
According to The Business Journals, the project totals $43 million and has drawn support from foundations and private donors. The school itself marked the occasion as the completion of what it calls Phase 1, with students stepping into the new classrooms, labs and gym for the first time, per MOA Architecture, the project's design firm.
Phase 1 also added a modern entrance and a new student hub alongside the gym, classrooms and labs, the firm's project writeup notes. The construction required tearing down the old Holy Family Rectory to make room for a new addition housing the gymnasium, science classrooms and entrance, according to H2I Group, which worked on the build.
Funding a First-Generation Mission
The expansion is financed through Arrupe's Lead the Way Capital Campaign, according to the same MOA Architecture reporting cited above. Haselden Construction, which broke ground on the project, says planning actually began back in 2019 — meaning the opening represents the payoff of roughly seven years of work before students ever set foot in the new spaces.
The fundraising effort has been substantial. The Steier Group, which worked on the campaign, says the community has raised more than $42 million for Arrupe's students, a figure that closely tracks the $43 million total cited for the finished project. Ninety-five percent of Arrupe students are the first in their families to attend college, the design firm's materials note — a statistic that underscores why the school's leadership has treated the building campaign as inseparable from its educational mission.
Growth Goals Tied to the New Space
School leaders have set their sights beyond bricks and mortar. Arrupe currently enrolls about 420 students, with a goal of reaching 500 once the project wraps up, according to Haselden Construction's account of the groundbreaking. The Steier Group adds that Arrupe set five-year growth benchmarks covering not just enrollment but also expanded work-study partnerships and a higher share of alumni earning college degrees.
Those degree-attainment numbers are part of what makes the investment notable. Steier Group reports that 50 percent of Arrupe graduates have gone on to earn a college degree, compared with just 13 percent nationally among students with similar backgrounds. Arrupe has operated in Denver since 2003 as part of the Cristo Rey Network, offering what the Steier Group describes as a rigorous Catholic, college-preparatory education built around that same first-generation student population.
What's Left to Build
The celebration marks only the midpoint of the project. Over the next nine months, Phase 2 will focus on renovating the existing building itself, according to MOA Architecture, with plans calling for new classrooms, administrative spaces and updated learning environments throughout.
Specifically, crews will infill the old gym with a mezzanine, add classrooms on the second floor, convert the first floor into administrative space and completely reconfigure the basement, per the architecture firm's project notes. That phase is slated for completion in fall 2026, which would bring the full, multiyear transformation of the Northwest Denver campus to a close roughly on the timeline school leaders set when planning began in 2019.
