(Lake Park)– The Harris-Lake Park School Board Wednesday evening reviewed design options. One consists of a renovation of the existing elementary building and moving the 6th grade from the middle school high school back into that facility. The other consists of constructing an addition onto the middle school/high school that would house pre-K through 3rd grades with 4th and 5th grades using shared space in the current middle school/high school. Matthew Basye, is an architect with FEH, which the district is working with. He outlined the advantages and disadvantages of new construction versus renovation…
“Advantages to building new are obviously it’s new construction so we have control over materials and methods. We can design it custom so it fits the educational needs of today. Some of the difficulties with renovating are you’re working within existing structures and spaces that you have, so it can be a challenge to make sure that you’re meeting all of the needs under that circumstance. However, renovating, you know you can cut down on cost because you’re using an investment that you’ve already got to try to adapt, so there’s pro’s and cons with each. I’m not sure how this will work out in this case but we’re studying both.”
Basye had no firm cost estimates last evening but gave a ball park estimate of between $12 million and $14 million for adding onto the middle school/high school, but he said it’s impossible yet to get a cost estimate on renovating the existing elementary, which in addition to other issues, has some code deficiencies. Basye says they’ll have that figure for the board at their meeting February 20th. Even though there’s still a lot to do, Basye says it’s his understanding the board is looking at going to the voters for a bond referendum later this year…
“They’re considering options for a bond referendum this year should the board decide that that’s a good idea and pick one of the options as something they think would be viable. If that were the case, a bond referendum passed, then if we did a renovation project it might be a year and-a-half for construction after design, and the renovation would probably take a little longer because we’d have to do it in phasing, moving people in and out and around to get that work done.”
Basye explains what happens from here…
“We’ve had more discussions with the administrators and we’ve got a few more changes to make. The plans are fairly well-designed. Now we go and look at what the costs of these things are, look more about the timelines, look more about what the logistics of each one is, so that when we come back to the board the next time, they have all of that information. They probably won’t act on anything at that time, they’ll need some time to digest and understand everything that we’ve done, but then they’ll have a good foundation for making a good decision in moving forward and then they can start notifying the public what the plans are and we’ll go from there.”
The board will further review more detailed options and cost estimates at their February 20th meeting and will likely take action on an option to take to the voters at their meeting in March.
