Board reserves judgement on GAVC renovations

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COAL CITY — Coal City Community Unit School District 1 board members expressed an air of reservation Monday with regard to Grundy Area Vocational Center’s addition and renovation proposal.

Lance Copes, director of GAVC, and Scott Riehl, architect for Healy Bender & Associates, presented the options to the board for addressing looming life/safety issues and solving space concerns at GAVC’s 40-year-old facility.

Copes is presenting the proposal this month to three of GAVC’s four feeder schools. He visited Morris Community High School last week, Coal City Dist. 1 on Monday, and will visit Gardner-South Wilmington High School on Wednesday.

Copes sought the Dist. 1 board’s response to a $3.47 million project, which was significantly trimmed from a $6.9 million plan devised in the early stages of the process.

“The board’s reaction was guarded because of the current economy, but they want us to continue to investigate,” Superintendent Dr. Kent Bugg said. “This board wants to make sure — and that’s why there wasn’t a definite yes tonight — that we are meeting the needs of our kids in the most economical way possible. They’re going to make sure that I’ve got that information for them before they decide yes or no.”

Each feeder school will be responsible for a portion of the project’s cost based on a blended formula between the school’s equalized assessed valuation and the school’s enrollment at GAVC. The blended formula, Copes explained, means Dist. 1 would be responsible for about 28 percent of the cost, or about $965,000 over a 20-year time frame. That equates to about $76,000 per year.

Coal City, which has 138 students attending GAVC, is still paying about $36,000 per year on GAVC’s repair project in 2004, which totaled $1 million. The district will continue to pay that cost for about 3 1/2 more years, Bugg said.

“Once that’s done, the net increase will be about $40,000 in terms of what we’re paying right now and what we would be paying,” Bugg said.

GAVC representatives, led by former director David Potts, started investigating options about four years ago for how it would cope with its increasing enrollment. GAVC’s repairs in 2004 were eyed to patch its building for “five to six years,” Copes said.

As of today, GAVC is still looking to solve its long-term space issues and also address 42 life/safety violations, which total $954,000.

Bugg said the GAVC board, which consists of one board member from each of the feeder schools, continued the discussion about how to solve increasing enrollment. This year, GAVC has a record enrollment of 627 students in a facility that houses 700 students, Copes said.

“We were starting to get very close to turning kids away from programs,” Bugg said. “None of us wanted to do that. So we put together a sub-committee to begin looking at space issues and how we can possibly address those issues.

“In the mean time, we had to get our 10-year life/safety survey. We saw an opportunity between the 10-year life/safety survey and the possible need for expansion to combine those two into one project.”

Bugg, who serves on the sub-committee and attends every GAVC meeting, credited Copes for maximizing the space in the plan, minimizing the cost and looking into having satellite courses at other school districts. But he noted more might be needed.

“I think we’re very close,” Bugg said. “We may have some other things we can do, but I think we’re very close to doing this in the most economical way possible.”

In its entirety, the planning process has devised five options, including the $6.9 million plan that proposed an 11,000-square-foot addition and renovations for 14,100 square feet. Architects originally provided four construction options until they were asked to minimize construction and prioritize upgrades, leading to the current proposal.

“In this process, we have explored many options,” Copes said. “We’ve looked at staying at multiple campuses. We’ve looked at different solutions for the full gamut of services.”

The critical factors in the revised expansion and renovation plan include developing a secure school entrance; developing an isolated main administration office; developing a commons area; updating the student bathrooms; providing staff bathrooms; adding a second criminal justice classroom; enlarging the health occupation classroom, updating the welding classroom and mechanical area; providing a girls locker room; providing a covered entry; and reconfiguring the parking lot.

As result, the revised plan includes a 1,600-square-foot addition with renovations covering 8,500 square feet. The scaled back, $3.47 million proposal includes all but $56,000 of the life/safety work.

“The life/safety work is something we need to do,” Copes said. “Our roofs are in very extensive need of repair. Currently we are patching and repairing the roof where water is leaking on $50,000 pieces of equipment.”

Copes said the project aims to provide GAVC with a suitable facility for 15 to 20 years, allowing a capacity for about 850 students. It also will address space issues facing the health occupation and criminal justice programs.

“The real decision that this board, and other boards, are going to have to make is should we put that money into the program to allow the kids to take advantage of the program, or do you want to start limiting enrollment,” Bugg said. “It becomes a matter of do we want to take care of just the life safety or do we want to roll that into and take care of the facilities and space issues.”

If given the go-ahead, the project is tentatively scheduled to begin in the summer of 2010 and completed by the end of summer in 2011.
 

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