(Lake Park)– Some important decisions lie ahead for the Harris-Lake Park School Board now that voters have overwhelmingly approved a bond issue for the construction of a new elementary building at the middle school-high school site. Among them is what to do with the current elementary building once the new facility is constructed. Superintendent Gary Richardson says all options are on the table for now…
“We’ll be looking at, A, potential buyers. They would be a preferred buyer, obviously with certain parameters that would need to be met. We don’t think that the city is interested in that particular building. They may be interested in the property for lots, but we fully intend to likely pay for the demolition of the building when it’s time.”
As of now, Richardson says there’s been no outside interest in the current elementary building. In addition to the facility itself, Richardson says the board also has to decide what to do with some property just north, across the street from the existing elementary…
“There’s ground just north of the building that could be sold as a lot. There’s ground to the north and west where a playground is and we’ve committed that the city can keep that. And we are in talks with the city about just swapping land here on this site with what we have up there.”
The board took no action on that at their meeting Monday evening.
Regarding construction of the new elementary, Richardson says FEH, the district’s architectural firm, has already started design work. The board Monday evening approved an agreement with an engineering firm for a site study and with another firm that specializes in geotechnical soil testing. Richardson says the school board also needs to decide whether or not to seek the service of what’s known as a “construction manager at risk” who would oversee the construction, along with the architect. Richardson says there are several advantages and disadvantages with that…
“The pro’s would be that whoever you would hire would serve as the general contractor and be involved in the design phase, so their knowledge of what you can bid out in the specs, obviously two sets of eyes are better than one, and the first set being our architect which is FEH Design. The downside of that is the fee that will be involved for that. It probably is anywhere from three to five percent of the total project cost and, you know, we just want to make sure that if we reduce it by that much then we have that much less to put into the project, so that’s the negative. It could also have an impact on the timeframe? It would have an impact on the timeframe, probably six to eight weeks. We have to go through the postings for request for proposal and requests for qualifications and then just the intent that we’re going to do all of those things have a 13 day waiting period after you start them.”
The Harris-Lake Park School Board will meet again Wednesday to make an official decision on that.
