This story from The Oak Ridger in Oak Ridge, TN. The renovation and addition to Oak Ridge High School came in $10.0 million over expectation. The Knox County project was to be $40 million dollar project. The Oak Ridge High School project was initially a more expensive project, because of UT-Batille and the specialized curricula that would be Oak Ridge High School. Also, renovation are always more expensive than a totally new construction.
I will support the New Northwest High School in Knox County being built similar to the other 12 Knox County high schools, with the only exception being the technology infrastructure. That will not cause the cost to rise in the bricks and mortar.
All field houses in Knox County have been built with parent and community dollars, except Gibbs that rooked and crooked Knox County into a $1.0 million dollar field house. My previous post, located here, has a PBA doccument that details the changes to the program for this new high school. The program on the new high school has been changed to build a 25,000 square foot field house to the tune of $3,175,000.00 and the addition of 78,500 square feet more than the program calls for. That additional 78,500 square feet is costing $9,969,500.00. Thus resulting in a school built to $13,144,500.00 more than its counterparts in Knox County. That is enough for another elementary school.
In the design, pay for an area and lay the underground utilities, so that you can add a wing on later, that was done at A.L. Lotts Elementary. Let’s get some business and long range planning thinking among the board members.
To the parents I have talked with it appears that the board is trying to make the Mayor look bad because they want an Escalade and he has given the money for a Suburban. It will be a Great and functioning school, but won’t have an indoor practice facility.
School bids $10 million over expectation
The lowest bid for the Oak Ridge High School renovation project came in almost $10 million over what officials thought would be needed to build the new school.
“We will – and must – build this school to educate our children for generations to come,” Oak Ridge Board of Education Chairman John Smith said.
“Prior to the hurricanes, we did not expect it to be over budget,” he added later.
Bids for the estimated $42 million construction, which is part of a larger $55 million pot, were opened Wednesday afternoon. They came from two Knoxville companies.
The lower bid of $50,545,000 came from Messer Construction, while Rentenbach Construction submitted a base bid of $56,090,000.
Each company also submitted two separate bids on extra work that included cabinets inside the school and the new soccer complex.
Messer Construction is the company that received the contract for the pre-grade work and installing geo-thermal wells for the new facility’s heating and cooling systems.
Originally, there were five pre-qualified contractors for the projects, including Blaine Construction, Denark Construction, and Ray Bell Construction.
Oak Ridge officials had quietly been preparing for higher-than-expected bids after Knox County’s school building projects recently came in over budget because of increasing post-hurricane construction costs.
Both the school system and the Oak Ridge Public Schools Education Foundation issued press releases immediately after the bid opening; both organizations vowed the school project will continue.
“The unexpected increase in building costs as a result of the recent natural disasters is something we could not have expected during our planning,” Oak Ridge Superintendent of Schools Tom Bailey said.
The next step in the planning process, Smith said, is for school and city officials, foundation members, and project engineers “to consider all options available to build a new high school that will not compromise the months of work and contributions given by this community.”
The School Board will meet soon – no date was given Wednesday – to hear a recommendation from The DLR Group and Heery International Inc., about “how best to move this forward,” Smith said.
Reconstruction and renovation of the 52-year-old school was to originally have started in mid-November.
