Cloverdale schools building project moves forward

The Cloverdale Community School Board voted to award the biggest part of the $1.4 million construction project to Wabash Valley Asphalt Tuesday night.

Superintendent Greg Linton said engineering company Curry and Associates recommended the bid from Wabash Valley Asphalt, which came in around $890,000.

The project, which will address drainage issues at the school as well as resurface all the parking lots and roads in the boundaries of the school, was originally expected to be a $1 million project.

Linton noted Wabash Valley Asphalt's bid originally came in at $934,939.81, but per the request of the engineering firm the portion of the bid that included adding a lane on the main road to the middle school was eliminated. This would have cost roughly an additional $44,000.

"We decided to eliminate that lane, not so much because of cost, but as they looked at it they felt it might create more confusion because we would have, essentially, two lanes yielding to traffic going north. It was their (Curry and Associates) recommendation at this time to table that," Linton said, noting at a later time the board could revisit that option.

Linton noted the bonds sold through the lease agreement with the Building Corporation totaled $1.5 million, with the school able to work with $1.423 million. He noted with additional "soft costs" figured into the project, the total construction project as presented in May is expected to be $1.4 million at most.

"We held off on everything else because this is the big one (project)," Linton said.

As for the time line, Linton said when the contractors visited before they had concerns about finishing the project before school started again in August. So, an addendum was made to the bid speculations allowing work through the season -- up to Oct. 1 -- to complete the project.

"We will have a pre-construction meeting tomorrow (Wednesday) that will confirm their schedule that the high school drainage, parking and line striping needs to be completed by the start of the school year. Anything that's not completed prior to the start of the school year will be the responsibility of Wabash Valley to put up the appropriate signage and things like that to redirect traffic," Linton explained to the board.

The remainder of the project will include updating HVAC equipment in the high school; upgrade the roof of the middle school; upgrading the gym PA system; upgrade bus parking lot fences for security reasons; resurface the track; resurface high school gym floor; upgrade security cameras at the press box; and replace old ventilation units at the elementary school.