The architectural firm designing a new Stillson Elementary and additions to Chippewa Falls Senior High School and middle school will attempt to find local contractors, the firm’s president said Tuesday.
The Chippewa Falls school district hired ATS&R of Minnesota to design the new construction after taxpayers voted to adopt a $65 million referendum in April.
“We want local contractors to be able to build these,” ATS&R vice president Dean Beeninga told the school board Tuesday. “We’re trying to keep money in town, as much as we can.”
Even if an out-of-state contractor submits the lowest bid, district finance manager Chad Trowbridge expects the project will still create local opportunities.
“An out-of-state company couldn’t mobilize enough workers to come in for this project,” Trowbridge said.
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Each school getting a share of the referendum money – Stillson Elementary, Chi-Hi and the middle school – will be bid as individual projects, Beeninga said.
ATS&R will then ask interested contractors for a price to complete work at all three schools.
If the project remains on schedule, construction bids will go out at the end of January and will be due back March 5, Beeninga said.
“I’m assuming this is going to be very competitive,” Trowbridge said.
The board also saw a video walkthrough of the new Stillson Elementary design Tuesday.
The roughly $21 million new Stillson building will be completed in July 2020, when students are expected to be able to move to the new, 37-acre County Highway J site in the town of Lafayette, about a mile west of Stillson’s current location, Beeninga said.
The new Stillson will have a “secure-entry” design, Beeninga said. Guests will enter a vestibule and speak to a receptionist to be buzzed into the building, with “two or three levels of security.”
A student dropoff section will be enlarged, adding space for more parents to drop off their students.
Middle, high school work
If the schedule is followed, additions and remodels at the middle school will be done in the summers of 2019, 2020 and 2021, Beeninga said.
The building will get sprinklers, dehumidification, fire suppression measures and technology cabling.
Construction on a 10-classroom middle school addition will begin in February 2019 and end that December, Beeninga said.
The addition won’t give the school more student capacity, but will reorganize the school’s small classrooms, Beeninga said.
Chi-Hi’s STEAM lab addition and remodels are expected to be completed in December 2019 or in 2020.
The Chippewa Falls school district worked with the firm to develop a facilities master plan in 2014. ATS&R has often taken on large capital projects at Wisconsin schools, including ventures at the Weyauwega-Fremont School District, Boyceville Community School District and the School District of New Richmond.
The referendum will add about $125 to the property tax bill of the owner of a $100,000 home. The project will be funded over a 20-year period.
In other school board news:
- The board approved the purchase of a property at 823 Coleman St., Chippewa Falls, which is adjacent to Chi-Hi. The district purchased a property on Wheaton Street in October 2017, and district superintendent Heidi Taylor-Eliopoulos said in October that the district has considered purchasing property near the high school with an eye for potential future expansion.
- At its meeting Tuesday the school board also welcomed a new Chi-Hi student representative for the school year. Senior Ingrid Lyberg is a member of the Chi-Hi emergency response team, was president of the Spanish Club in 2017 and participates in several musical and singing groups, she said Tuesday.