_{Photo: Design for Cooper Center for Active Living, set to be completed next year. Photo by City of Newton}

The city added nearly 300 projects to its Capital Improvement Plan this year after Buildings Commissioner Josh Morse evaluated all of the city’s municipal buildings and documented what they’ll need in the coming years.

It’s part of a proactive push the city is doing with building and infrastructure planning as urban development changes in the face of climate change and growing population.

“Our Capital Improvement Plan is 619 different projects now—new and continuing projects—using a variety of sources—with a total investment of nearly $1.5 billion, of which over $400 million is currently funded in this CIP,” Newton Chief Operating Officer Jonathan Yeo said as he presented his five-year plan to the City Council Monday night.

More than 60 projects have been funded, partially or fully, with American Rescue Plan Act money from the Biden Administration.

Yeo didn’t go through all 619 of the city’s capital projects, choosing to highlight five major ones instead, which will cost a combined $264 million:

• The Countryside School
• Horace Mann
• Lincoln-Eliot School
• Cooper Center for Active Living
• Franklin School

Both the new Lincoln-Eliot building and the Cooper Center for Active Living are set to open in the later half of 2025.

Other smaller but important projects include the city’s Street Tree Planting Program, which has focused on populating heat islands with more trees, as well as new fire trucks and solar panel installations on rooftops, to name just a few.

The city will also be restoring the Commonwealth Avenue Carriageway in Auburndale and converting gas-powered streetlights to solar-powered ones, as part of the city’s extensive Climate Action Plan.

A lot of roads are set to be paved, too.

You can watch Yeo’s entire presentation online.