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A mix of innovation and tradition will greet students returning to Minnehaha Academy next week, two years after a natural gas explosion leveled part of the campus, killing two staffers and injuring nine other people.

“We are absolutely thrilled to welcome our students and family and faculty and staff back home, here at the Upper School,” said school President Donna Harris, in a preview tour for reporters on Thursday afternoon. “We are just thrilled for those doors to open next week and our families to return.”

, sparked when workers attempted to replace a gas meter in the basement of the school’s original century-old building on West River Parkway, just south of Lake Street in Minneapolis.

The blast on Aug. 2, 2017 killed the school’s receptionist, 47-year-old Ruth Berg, and part-time janitor and alumnus John Carlson, 82.

They’ll both be remembered in the new construction — a lobby space near the entrance has two wooden benches with memorial plaques inset in the backrests.

“In a couple of months, we’ll also have a beautiful stained glass pieces, one that honors John and one that honors Ruth,” Harris said.

The building also has displays of brick salvaged from the rubble, as well as original stone stair treads set into a new common area floor, ready for the feet of generations more of Minnehaha Academy students.

But the new 75,000-square-foot building at the center of campus, set between the surviving gymnasium and fine arts wings of the school, also features ultra-modern amenities, like curtain glass outer walls — with fine black fritting to keep birds from striking the surface — modular office and classroom space, casual common areas and high-tech lab and audio visual fixtures.

The grounds feature additional parking, outdoor classroom space and a natural amphitheater space just out the school’s back door. The project was designed by the Cuningham Group architectural firm and built by Mortenson Construction.

School officials wouldn’t discuss the cost in detail, but said a $50 million capital campaign paid for the rebuild, part of a larger “Together We Rise” campaign.

The school is one of the Twin Cities’ most elite, a private Christian prep school affiliated with the Northwest Conference of the Evangelical Covenant Church. High school tuition costs about $22,000 a year.

About 400 students are expected to make the transition from a temporary high school space in Mendota Heights to the new campus this year. School officials say they built the new building to accommodate as many as 600 students in the future.

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Tim Nelson

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The private school in Minneapolis, badly damaged by a gas explosion in 2017, has rebuilt its high school campus and is about to resume classes at its century-old home on West River Parkway.

The main entrance of the new Minnehaha Academy building.

Tim Nelson | MPR News

Minnehaha Academy president Donna Harris.

Orange stone set into the floor of the new lobby at Minnehaha Academy .

The west entrance to the new Minnehaha Academy building.

New Minnehaha Academy poised to rise from ashes of gas explosion

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