SCHOOLS Architects consider options on where to front building



Residents don't want the increased traffic, a board member said.
By DENISE DICK
VINDICATOR TRUMBULL STAFF
WARREN -- Whether the new kindergarten through eighth-grade building at the McGuffey school site faces Dunstan Drive or Tod Avenue likely won't be decided until month's end.
Architects on the school building project initially proposed a design of the school facing Dunstan.
McGuffey Elementary now faces Tod.
Board member Nedra Bowen, who lives in the area, said she's spoken to 35 residents of both Tod and Dunstan who told her they don't want the school to face Dunstan.
"I can't vote [for a design facing Dunstan] unless the residents want it that way," Bowen said at a meeting Tuesday of architects and school district officials.
"I do not want to go against what they want and I want."
Wishes of neighbors
Residents living on Dunstan don't want the influx of traffic from buses and parents dropping off children; and Tod residents don't want green space where their school used to be, she said.
She asked Kent Underwood of Fanning/Howey Associates Inc., of Dublin, Ohio, project manager, to come up with a second design facing Tod. Architects presented two designs facing Dunstan: one with bus access from Dunstan and one with bus access from Tod.
Because the district wants to keep schools, including McGuffey, open until the new schools are built, designs facing Tod are limited. But Underwood said they'd present a second design.
Linda Metzendorf, board president, said school board members would discuss the issue at their next meeting July 27.
She suggested moving the building designed for the McGuffey site to the newly-purchased Parkman Road location, which is planned for a kindergarten through eighth- grade school to be built later.
The school district is building five new kindergarten through eighth grade-schools and a new high school through an Ohio School Facilities Commission project. OSFC is covering about 81 percent of the estimated $170 million cost, with a bond issue approved by voters last year covering the remainder.
Existing schools will likely be demolished.
First in plan
Schools at the McGuffey and Lincoln sites are planned for construction first, with the goal of pupils being in the new schools by August 2006.
James Russo, executive director of business operations, and Superintendent Betty J. English said the sequence of school construction was made to affect the least number of pupils possible and to allow schools to remain open during construction.
Architects said surveying and other work already completed at the McGuffey site would have to be done at the Parkman Road location.
denise_dick@vindy.com

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