SCHOOL CONSTRUCTION Five bids submitted for contract

The school board meets Thursday to accept construction bids.
By DENISE DICK
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
AUSTINTOWN -- Five companies submitted bids to be the general contractor for the new middle school project.
Hively Construction Co. Inc. of Canfield was the apparent low bidder with a base bid of about $10.19 million, but school officials said the information submitted by all of the companies must be reviewed.
The school board will meet at 7 a.m. Thursday in special session at the board of education offices, Idaho Road, to accept construction bids.
The three-floor, 174,668-square-foot building on South Raccoon Road will house pupils in grades 6-8 and have 44 classrooms, about 900 square feet each.
Time frame
Architects have estimated that it will take between 16 months and 20 months to complete construction.
The building will replace the aging Austintown Middle School, which will close when the new school opens. The Mahoning Avenue property will likely be sold and whether the building is demolished by the school district before the sale or afterward by the buyer hasn't been determined.
Re-zoning of the Mahoning Avenue property to commercial was approved by the township earlier this year at the school board's request.
The school's first floor will include eighth grade classrooms, offices, a cafetorium, gymnasium, special education classrooms and vocal and instrumental music rooms.
Floor-plan
Seventh-grade classrooms and a media center will be in the second floor with sixth-graders on the third floor.
When the school is complete, some pupils will be shuffled. Fourth and fifth-graders will attend Frank Ohl Middle School, which along with Austintown Middle School, now houses fifth through eighth graders.
Kindergarten through third-graders will attend one of the school district's five elementary schools.
The school board borrowed the money to build the school through a 2.9-mill bond issue voters approved in November 2003.