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Architects cut school addition down to around $22.2 million
by Gregory R. Norfleet · News · May 05, 2016


With a new set of drawings on the central project of the school district’s 15-year plan, construction estimates dropped from $28 million to about $22.2 million, the West Branch Board of Education heard last week.


However, the board still wants to cut that estimate to under $20 million, a figure it believes the district can afford, should voters approve.

The board met April 25 to review the new drawings for additions at West Branch High School and Hoover Elementary, projects that would lead to eliminating West Branch Middle School.

Struxture Architects’ Craig Schwerdtfeger and Jesse Lizer and HBK Engineering’s Brian Boelk explained some of the items they and Superintendent Kevin Hatfield agreed the project could drop, shrink or adjust.

Lizer started by saying the changes at Hoover Elementary cut nearly $1 million, so about $4.8 million was cut from the work at WBHS.

Hoover Elementary work had previously been estimated at $6.2 million to $6.3 million, and is now estimated at about $5.4 million.

The Hoover renovation involves removing the corner of the building where the two wings meet and rebuilding it, filling in the breezeway and expanding the walls outward.

Two of the money-saving changes on the ground floor include shrinking the music room from 1,600 to 1,300 square feet and the special education room from 650 to about 300 square feet. Upstairs, the plan would reduce the size of the office, one classroom and one storage area.

Once the work is done, the building will be reorganized with kindergarten through second grade in the north wing and ground floor, and the third through fifth grades in the west wing and upper floor.

The school board took a tour outside Hoover Elementary and Lizer gave them an idea of how far the addition would reach into the playground area, gesturing that the back wall would line up with a chain-link fence that surrounds the prekindergarten playground.

Hatfield noted that the addition would be heated and cooled with the existing geothermal heating and ventilation system.

“We’re talking about solving a lot of big problems with this work,” the superintendent said.

At the high school, the new auditorium would still seat between 650 and 700 people, but the amount of space in the room would shrink a bit, as would the back rooms and green room.

Hatfield noted that the current auditorium holds up to 295 people.

“It would be difficult to expand at a later time, though,” Board President Mike Colbert noted of the proposed auditorium.

Hatfield noted that the school board wanted to look into fortifying the auditorium against tornadoes, hoping Federal Emergency Management Agency grants to do that would reduce what the school district must borrow for construction. The answer: No.

“FEMA grants only pay for reinforcement,” he said.

He noted that the school district could likely get a FEMA grant that would fortify the auditorium against an F3 tornado, saying 80 percent of tornadoes in Iowa are F3 or lower in strength. Schwerdtfeger agreed.

Board member Jodi Yeggy said that should a tornado hit, they only people with the time to get to the auditorium would be anyone in in the high school at the time.