A groundbreaking ceremony for the new Iola Elementary School could come in April, as the project nears the end of the planning stage and gets ready to be let for bids, with demolition and the start of construction this summer.
Budget projects appear to be on track, with a little bit of a cushion for unexpected expenses or savings.
USD 257 board members heard an update from SJCF Architects, the Wichita firm leading the process to build a new elementary school and new science center at the Iola High School campus.
SJCF is about halfway through its process to design construction documents. Soon, they’ll ask the construction manager, Coonrod and Associates, to send the project out for bids, which will give more insight into the actual project costs.
Current projects expect the science center to come in at a total cost of about $6,932,724. That’s about $70,000 under the $7 million budget, but does not include furnishings. It does include things like site development and demolition, and engineering costs.
The elementary school budget comes in at $24,946,476, a bit under the $25 million budget.
That number includes about $5.5 million in miscellaneous expenses like $600,000 in land purchases, site development, engineering costs and more. It also includes about $175,000 for soil remediation.
The board also met Monday with representatives from SJCF and the Environmental Protection Agency to discuss the soil remediation process at the new elementary school site.
The EPA is working to clean properties throughout Iola as a Superfund site cleanup, after an ironworks foundry and zinc smelting plants contaminated the soil about 100 years ago. The site of the new elementary school, at Kentucky and Monroe streets, was near those industries and soil testing shows various levels of contamination on the property, but less than initially anticipated.
The EPA will clean up the eastern third of the property, which will eventually become playground or recreation areas.
But Coonrod, working with Terracon, an environmental engineering firm, will clean up the western and central parts of the property.
That’s because site development will require the removal of much of the contaminated soil to prepare it for construction. Terracon will conduct testing along the way, ensuring the contaminated soil is removed.
“It didn’t make sense to wait for the EPA to do the soil remediation in that area. The EPA would put dirt back and then we’d have to cart it off,” Allison Le, SCJF architect, explained.
Having Coonrod in charge of the work also will speed the process, as the EPA likely won’t begin its soil remediation efforts until October.
“We couldn’t wait that long if we want the school to be open in the fall of 2021,” Terry Wiggers, executive vice president with SJCF, said.
