A Superior Court judge is weighing a lawsuit that seeks to halt Boston’s $200 million public-private rehab of White Stadium for a pro soccer team, but if the suit fails, the project is set to dramatically change school sports in the city.

While the project has the support of a good number of BPS coaches, it’s been met with skepticism by parts of the community, including a high school football coach whose team is going to be “without a home” to make room for a National Women’s Soccer League expansion team.

Mayor Michelle Wu has championed the public-private partnership with Boston Unity Soccer Partners as a boon to BPS students, vowing to go full steam ahead with the teardown and rehab amid a pending lawsuit and the division the project has caused among the community. Taxpayers are on the hook for roughly half the costs for the plan.

“The renovation allows Boston Public Schools to fully leverage White Stadium’s unique location adjacent to the Playstead athletic fields and Franklin Park’s cross-country course, transforming the area into a year-round indoor/outdoor athletic hub and dramatically expanding hours of access for BPS student-athletes, coaches and community,” a Wu spokesperson said in a statement.

“With modern infrastructure and expanded amenities, the district can finally maximize this space for year-round training, games, meets, and community events.”

According to the mayor’s office, new and upgraded features will include:

A regulated eight-lane track with facilities for field events, including shot put and pole vault for the first time.
A natural grass field for soccer, football and additional BPS sports.
New BPS locker rooms.
On-site coaching space for BPS Athletics staff.
Strength and conditioning spaces, plus sports medicine rooms for recovery and development.
Student lounges and study areas that support academic success.
A multi-use community room for team meetings, student celebrations, and community events.
New outdoor basketball courts and resurfaced, with expanded tennis courts in the Franklin Park Shattuck area.

Prior to the ongoing demolition of the stadium, usage there was “extremely limited.” Just one BPS soccer team, Boston Latin Academy girls’ soccer, and two football teams, Boston Latin Academy and Boston Latin School, play their home games at the 76-year-old dilapidated facility, per the mayor’s office.

A few track meets and small graduations round out the year for BPS usage. Before demolition, the stadium was open from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday to Friday, and it was more of a seasonal facility with no heating or cooling system, and no water during the cold-weather months, a Wu administration official told the Herald.

After the rehab, the facility will be open on weekends, with expanded hours for the public other than the 20-game days set aside for the NWSL team, the official said.

“The new White Stadium will be open at least 345 days a year — generally 15 hours a day for BPS and community use,” a Wu spokesperson said. “This expanded availability means BPS athletics will be able to host more teams from more schools, more practices, more games, more championships — and more students experiencing the pride and power of competitive athletics in a space built for them.”

‘What about the kids?’

While the mayor has repeatedly framed the plan as a win for Boston Public Schools student-athletes, critics, including the proponents in the lawsuit that seeks to stop the project and was the subject of a trial last week, have said that it is primarily aimed at benefiting wealthy investors, rather than BPS kids.

That kind of talk infuriates Hatim Jean-Louis, a BPS track and cross country coach who runs a strength and conditioning summer program at White Stadium. He spoke of the run-down facilities, including bathrooms in the women’s locker room that are so “deplorable” and “disgusting” that his female athletes can’t use them.

“We have holes on the track,” Jean-Louis said. “What about the kids? Ask the kids what they want. No one asked the kids what they want, except the mayor. Not Emerald Necklace, not anyone that’s running for the mayor’s office. All of it is political jargon.”

The Emerald Necklace Conservancy and a group of 20 park neighbors filed suit against the City of Boston and Boston Unity Soccer Partners last year, alleging in their complaint that the proposed use would illegally privatize protected parkland. A judge is mulling the claims, following last week’s three-day trial.

Wu’s mayoral opponent Josh Kraft, son of the billionaire New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, has aligned himself with the project opponents and called on the mayor to halt demolition and cancel the lease until a use analysis study can be conducted that focuses solely on the needs of BPS students.

“It’s actually disgusting that the people who speak, they never spoke to me in that facility nine months of the year, for the last 10 years,” Jean-Louis said. “I don’t get it. I’ve been here for the last decade-plus. I’ve never seen these people.”

Jean-Louis spoke of the revenue-generating opportunities that the project could bring, saying that he envisions championship track meets that draw athletes from around the world.

While not as directly impacted by the project as Jean-Louis, whose athletes run cross-country through Franklin Park, Jon Rudzinski, a varsity girls soccer coach for Boston Latin School, said the upgrades are sorely needed, particularly on the field, which he previously deemed to be too dangerous for his players.

“The field itself was an absolute disgrace, and anyone who says differently doesn’t know what they’re talking about,” Rudzinski said. “We played there once, when I was a coach three years ago. It was the first time we played there. We played there because it was another Boston school, it was their home field and they scheduled the game.

“I told them after the game, I’m never going to play on this field again,” he said. “It was unsafe. It was dangerous. There was literally metal drainage … in the middle of the field. I couldn’t believe it.”

While his team has had limited use of White Stadium, Rudzinski envisions that after the rehab, there will be public pressure placed on the BPS athletics department to have as many school teams play there as possible.

At the very least, Rudzinski said his players will take advantage of the amenities, like the training room.

Football team without a home

A big knock on the plan has been that the NWSL schedule, which runs from March to November, will displace high school football teams for much of their seasons.

As it turns out, the two displaced high school football teams, Boston Latin Academy and Boston Latin School, already began practicing and playing their home games elsewhere last year. That arrangement is set to become permanent.

Ray Butler, coach of the Boston Latin School team, said the move to Clemente Field in the Fens has been largely positive for his team.

Clemente and Boston Latin School are both located in the Fenway neighborhood, meaning that players can get to their games and practices by walking a couple of minutes, rather than having to take transportation to Roxbury’s White Stadium, Butler said.

Rocco Zizza, coach of the Boston Latin Academy team, said the experience has been entirely different for his players, who went from being able to walk to White Stadium to having to take unreliable BPS transportation to get to home games.

“That’s always been our home field,” Zizza said. “We’re basically a team without a home right now.”

Zizza said his team was moved around all last year for home games. There have been times where games had to start an hour or two late, because the team has to take buses, and “a lot of times the buses simply don’t show up.”

While he’s hopeful that his team will have access to the new locker room, training facilities and will get to play on the field a bit after the rehab is complete, Zizza said there have been some bad feelings about the project that were aired out at a prior union meeting he attended that included BPS teachers and coaches.

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“It was brought up at a union meeting that the city is giving more money to a professional billionaire than they are to school teachers and coaches and athletes of Boston,” Zizza said. “It is an issue because obviously it was originally $50 million. Now it’s $100 million so they found an additional $50 million.

“I had to pay out of my pocket for football jerseys and football equipment, and all the coaches in the city do that,” Zizza said. “Our literal budget for football, for equipment, is $1,500, and we have three paid coaches. So yeah, the idea of them spending $100 million and we get to look at the stadium as opposed to playing in it, it kind of pisses you off.”

A Wu administration official said there are ongoing conversations with BPS athletics and city leadership about the best possible home field for Boston Latin Academy. An interim plan would see their home games be played at the West Roxbury campus. Ultimately, though, there are other fields being upgraded right now that will better serve BLA, the official said.

“The city has said publicly that it wants every football team to have a home field, and right now, really everybody except BLA has that,” the Wu official said. “And then White Stadium can be a place for every football team in the city to play those season-ending games … in November.”