District to seek bids on 1st of new buildings

The board will seek bids for the new high school early in 2006.
By PETER H. MILLIKEN
VINDICATOR TRUMBULL STAFF
WARREN -- The board of education is to embark in earnest this week on the $153 million construction project that will replace all 13 city schools with five new buildings by mid-2009.
The board will have on its Tuesday meeting agenda a resolution to seek bids for construction of the first of four new $17.7 million kindergarten-through-eighth-grade buildings.
That building, for which site preparation will begin this fall and construction will start next spring, will be built next to the Lincoln Elementary School building on a 20-acre board-owned site off Atlantic Street Northeast. The new building is scheduled to open in fall 2007.
"What we have is a beautiful building that is very functional. It's very educationally sound," Frank Caputo, district project manager, said of this and the other new buildings.
"These buildings are being built with the curriculum in mind," said Dawn Marzano, the school district's communications director. "It's not just bricks and mortar."
Funding
Eighty-one percent of the construction project cost is funded by the state; the remainder comes from a local bond issue voters passed in November 2003. "We have a tremendous opportunity to reshape this city through the school district," Marzano said of the construction effort.
The board will seek bids early next year for construction of the $40.1 million new Warren G. Harding High School adjacent to the current school. Construction of that three-story building will begin next spring, with the building to open in the fall of 2008, enrolling about 1,800 students.
After the new Harding opens, the current building is to be demolished, except for the auditorium, some office space and the front colonnade.
The second kindergarten-through-eighth-grade building is to be built on Willard Avenue, adjacent to the vacant Willard School, which will be demolished later this year. Construction of the new school there is to begin in fall 2006, and the new building is to open in January or February 2008.
At the Willard site, the school district already owns about six acres, and the city will donate eight acres, requiring the school district to buy only an additional half-acre to complete the 141/2-acre site. Mayor Michael O'Brien said the city will pay $75,000 to reinstall a traffic light at Willard Avenue and Youngstown Road Southeast.
Parkman Road school
The third K-through-8 building is to be built on a vacant, 18-acre site on Parkman Road Northwest, next to Trumbull Plaza, which Caputo said is the only available site in the city's northwest quadrant with sufficient land.
The board will determine how much of that site consists of wetlands and will replace the wetlands, as necessary, either on or off site, he said. A consultant is studying the wetlands issue at that site for the board, he added. Construction there is scheduled to begin in fall 2007, with the building opening in the fall of 2009.
The fourth K-through-8 building is to be built on the same timetable as the Parkman Road building at a site in the city's southwest quadrant that hasn't been determined. Sites under consideration are land adjacent to Jefferson or Horace Mann elementary schools or Southwest Park, if the city donates the park, Caputo said.
Building details
The four new buildings will be similar to one another, each having five computer labs, two music rooms and two gymnasiums, with one of the gyms doubling as an auditorium. Each will enroll about 1,100 students.
"There'll be equity of programs, and there'll be equity in terms of class sizes," in the four buildings, Caputo said.
Each of the four will have separate entrances for elementary and middle school pupils, with all pupils using the common areas -- the cafeteria, gyms, music and art rooms, media center and courtyards -- at different times of the school day.
The board scaled its project down from five to four buildings after it realized the Ohio School Facilities Commission had overestimated the district's future enrollment.
All four buildings and the new high school will be built of brick and be fully air-conditioned, with state-of-the-art computer wiring and computers in every classroom.
After the new buildings open, the state will pay for demolition of the current school buildings, except Willard, which has been vacant for more than 25 years and will be demolished with local funds.
Staggered schedule
The construction schedule is being staggered to ensure availability of skilled construction tradesmen, Caputo said. The entire project will end in 2009 with the demolition of the old school buildings and completion of the Harding athletic fields.
The construction manager is Carbone, Ozanne and Hammond Management of Canton, whose task is to complete the project on time and within budget. The architects are Olsavsky-Jaminet of Youngstown and Niles and Fanning/Howey Associates Inc. of Dublin, Ohio.
milliken@vindy.com