DANVERS - Students from 50 communities would study everything from floriculture to robotics in a new, state-of-the-art vocational complex that would merge Essex Agricultural and Technical and North Shore Technical high schools.

Architects presented floor plans and a $140.6 million price tag last week for the facility, to be constructed off Route 62 in Danvers across from the main Essex Aggie campus.

School officials say the merger is overdue. Each year, about 300 students are refused admission because of space shortages at the two public vocational high schools.

"We're talking about thousands of students who have been denied the chance to receive vocational education in their district," said Amy O'Malley, superintendent director of North Shore Tech in Middleton. "We've been working on this for eight years."

The merger - which would also incorporate the Peabody High School vocational program - now hinges on funding, which is complicated, officials say, because more than 50 communities would send students to the new school.

"Everything is in place," said state Rep. Ted Speliotis, D-Danvers. "The major hurdle now is dealing with the (Massachusetts School Building Authority) program and Legislature to determine what is the cost to cities and towns."

The merger is completely distinctive among the 426 school building projects seeking money from the state School Building Authority because it isn't a school district and serves so many towns.

"We have to get over the initial sticker shock of the cost," Speliotis said, "and recognize that it may be very affordable to cities and towns if we can be innovative enough to divide up the cost with the state."

The new school

The merged vocational school would educate 1,450 students in a four-story building set in the hills off Maple Street in Danvers on the state-owned Essex Aggie property, which comprises 166 acres.

The main floor of the building would incorporate an atrium area entrance and a public focus where the culinary program and a public restaurant and bakery staffed by students would be located, as well as the cosmetology and pet grooming departments and a large dining common. Other vocational programs at the school will include floriculture, graphic arts, plumbing, masonry, veterinary technician studies, robotics and dozens more.

Roger Bourgeois, the new superintendent of Essex Aggie, said the merger of the two smaller schools and the Peabody program would centralize resources.

"The sports teams, clubs, the diversity of programs - everything will be magnified," Bourgeois said.

Architects said they factored into their plan that the schools would reuse about 25 percent of their equipment and bring it to the new facility, although school officials hope they can boost that figure.

"The point is that we're looking for opportunities to save money," said Danvers Town Manager Wayne Marquis, chairman of the Temporary Oversight Board for the merger.

Essex Aggie plans to preserve its hallmark, white-pillared administration building, Smith Hall, but it's likely many of the outdated buildings around the campus will be demolished.

Berry Hall, which houses the North Shore Community College culinary program, is slated for demolition in the plan. It sits roughly where the new visitor parking lot would be.

The oversight board is also looking to North Shore businesses to sponsor the purchase of various vocational equipment for the new school.

"We're talking to the Chamber of Commerce," Marquis said. "You need employees who are highly trained and skilled, so there is a real benefit."

Cost

The architects originally presented a $180 million plan, but the merger oversight board asked them to scale it back to make it more affordable. Architects Robert Vogel and Gregg Schroeder came back last week with the $140.6 million plan.

"I think it's realistic, but it's predicated on a fairly fast start - in one to two years," said Vogel, of Design Partnership of Cambridge, located in Charlestown. He and Schroeder presented the design at a meeting in the North Shore Tech library.

"Inflation alone, even with this aggressive schedule, is at $11.4 million," said Marquis, who is among more than 13 people on the oversight board that meets monthly. "I wish we could get this moving tomorrow."

The revised plan eliminated some classrooms and a field house and scaled back the overall square footage.

Design Partnership has been working with the merger board since 2003, and as time has passed, the estimates for a new building continue to balloon from original projections of about $80 million.

The state will begin reimbursing money for school building projects this fiscal year after a four-year moratorium, and the merger oversight board plans to meet with legislators next month to discuss funding.

Current schools

North Shore Technical High School serves 16 North Shore cities and towns, including Gloucester, Rockport, Essex and Manchester, and is housed in an old factory building on Logbridge Road in Middleton.

"It's safe to say we outgrew it when we moved in," O'Malley said of the building. "It's never been a proper school building. It's a retrofitted machine shop, no matter what we do."

North Shore Tech receives between 250 and 300 applications each year and has space to accept 120 freshmen, according to O'Malley.

The Peabody High School vocational program runs out of Higgins Middle School and the high school.

"The fact remains that the investment hasn't been made locally, regionally or statewide into the kind of school this region needs," said David McGeney, who has served on the Peabody School Committee for 12 years. "The alternative is to offer a narrower range of courses at a greater expense, so that doesn't serve the students best."

Essex Agricultural and Technical High School, founded in 1913, educates students from more than 50 Massachusetts communities and is the only state-run school in the commonwealth. It was taken over by the state Department of Education in the late 1990s when the Essex County government was dissolved.

"Most of our buildings are in need of repair or replacement," said Bourgeois, who took over as superintendent this summer.

Essex Aggie has roughly 440 students. Each year, about 270 students apply, and the school can accept 130 freshmen, according to Principal Gene Demsey.

The oversight board is aiming to have the new school built by 2012 or 2013, according to O'Malley.

"Funding is the issue," McGeney said. "There really isn't any strong opposition to this concept. Everyone's on board that there's a need, but like so many things today, it's just trying to find the resources. That's the tough piece of the puzzle."