South Putnam board approves first phase of renovation project

Thursday, February 21, 2013

The South Putnam School Board once again met on Tuesday to discuss the building renovations to the South Putnam High School gym.

The project, which has been discussed for the past several months, involves repairing the gym walls as well as exterior brick repair to the building.

Corporation Attorney John Zeiner came before the board with several routine issues, such as proof of running an ad in the Banner Graphic for the third amendment to the lease, which will fund the project. Also, a second ad was run asking for bids for the project.

Architect Tom Neff presented the board with several bids, which were recently received from Glenroy Construction, 3-D Professional Contracting and J.C. Riberger. The bids ranged from $263,800 to $293,800.

It was some welcoming news for the board that had an original estimate of nearly $500,000, which was later reduced to an estimate $300,000.

"The good news is that the bids actually came in pretty close to what we had projected," said Neff. "They will make sure everything is back in order by graduation."

The board decided to go with Glenroy Construction for the project, which includes installing the steel support beams along with the painting of the gym and steel within the bid price itself, something for which the board was expecting to pay extra.

With the base bid of $263,800 and soft costs totaling $26,000, which includes a $10,000 contingency there is a project cost subtotal of $289,800.

In previous months, the board decided to refinance its lease on the high school building. For the same price of financing $200,000-$400,000 the corporation could finance $2 million.

The extra funding allowed the board to look at many other issues that are also in need of being addressed.

The second phase, which the board has not acted on yet, involves the repairing of the bricks in the high school gym and pool.

"Now that we know a lot more about your structure, part of what we need to do is to actually tie the re-enforcing back for that system to the block," explained Neff. "We don't want to count on just the brick. We'll make sure that the system is supported by the block wall and not just the brick, which could crumble."

Gypsum boards will be fastened through the brick into the block. There will also be a harder substance, similar to stucco, but much harder, that will go over the gypsum board, which will require no painting or maintenance.

"What we determined is that we believe we could do just the upper portion of the pool walls and we wouldn't have to take it all the way to the ground," explained Neff. "It would pretty much be a band that would go all around the gym and take it to the pool. There's no need to take it to the ground because the damage is up above. It will look like it was actually meant to be that way."

Neff looked at several other options, but determined them to be far more expensive. It was estimated that to fix the exterior skin of the walls and modifying the fascia as required had an estimated subtotal of $365,519.48. That number includes construction costs as well as soft costs and contingency.

Phase three of the project, which Neff touched on briefly involved an addition to Central Elementary School.

Neff presented the board with two options, one being just adding additional bathrooms to the school and the second being adding additional bathrooms and classrooms.

Option one, which would add additional bathrooms, had an estimated cost of $319,500. Option two, had an estimated cost of $1,667,175.

The board once again made no decision, but however voiced its opinion on just adding the bathrooms and using the leftover money of the $2 million for additional items that may need to be addressed at the high school.

With all phases of the project using option one at Central Elementary, Neff estimated the cost at $974,819.48. If the board were to go with option two it would likely cost around $2,322,494.48.

Among the other items discussed during Tuesday's school board meeting was the resignation of middle school swim coach Matthew Edwards and the hiring of Anna Kendall as the middle school swim coach.

The South Putnam School Board will have its next meeting on Monday, March 18 at 7 p.m. in the Central Elementary Music Room.

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