Allen Community College is in the planning stages of designing a new activity building, though it has yet to be presented to the Board of Trustees.
A planning committee will hold its first meeting on July 10, and the school will meet with a design-build company the following week to discuss the plans.
We hope to have a rendering about 30 days after we meet with the design company, Vice President of Finance and Operations, Brian Counsil said. The activity building will be for the students and the athletes. We plan to use a five-year endowment campaign for this project. Once we have those renderings, we will be able to show people what we want to raise money for.
Counsil explained that a design-build contractor is a contractor that goes out and gets its own architect, engineer and subcontractors for every part of the project. Counsil said it makes the process easier because everyone reports to the contractor and the owner of the company meets with the school.
When I got here in 2015 we had a $2 million project going on for our locker rooms, two new labs and our entry ways. I had the general contractor, the engineer, the architect, and then me. Real quickly we were sitting down in meetings saying why is this done like this? I had an engineer blaming the contractor. The contractor says well we need to get this fixed and now the school is paying for it. It was three on one. It was contentious management project, Counsil said last week.
ACC wants to secure Lloyd Builders of Ottawa to do the project. The company completed a $6 million project for the school last year.
Despite the cost, that project has already been paid in full.
The school hoped to do the same thing with the activity building.
We paid for that out of reserves. We split that into two years using three funds. We started out with $1.8 million out of capital outlay, and the following year the remaining $4.2 million balance was split between our general fund and our auxiliary enterprises fund, Counsil said. The reserves in that fund are reserves made by the college. Auxiliary enterprises is its own little component unit. So as it builds reserves, it pays for projects just like that. Early indications are that we will be to make the same approach for the activity building .
