New school not as green

Published 4:00 pm Saturday, December 9, 2006

Officials pare eco-friendly roofs from plans for the BHS building.

Atop a carpet of fraying fibers at the Bainbridge High School library, officials spent Thursday evening weighing flooring options for the new 200 building.

Using carpet would save an estimated $80,000 in building costs. But drawing from four years of custodial experience, Superintendent Ken Crawford favored hardwood, saying it would require less time and money to maintain in the long run.

Others, like school board president Bruce Weiland, wondered if carpet-less classrooms would bring noise problems due to an overabundance of reflective surfaces.

Meanwhile rang the echoes of mounting concerns about whether contractors, by exceeding district cost projections, would tug the rug from beneath the feet of planners come bidding time.

“We won’t know until we get there,” said capital projects director Tamela VanWinkle, of the March bid. “The best we can do is acknowledge that this is what could happen.”

By “this,” VanWinkle meant meeting the same plight as other school projects across the state, many of which have been stung by a hostile bidding climate.

Closest to home, a planned renovation at Bremerton High School – originally estimated at about a third of the cost of the Bainbridge High School project – recently received a low bid that exceeded projections by more than $2 million.

So at Thursday’s special school board meeting, officials discussed the things they can control – like flooring materials and green roofs, 80 percent of which will be eliminated to cut costs and bring the project within budget – before shifting focus to those they can’t, like labor shortages, the rising cost of building materials and the recent gravitation of contractors toward private projects.

Along with saving $218,500 by eliminating the green roofs, planners pared paneling, exterior glazing and storage space among some 41 budget adjustments.

Some of the suggested changes – like cutting classroom casework in half and making windows near air-conditioners inoperable – were rejected by planners, who in the end trimmed about $1.34 million from the design.

None of the cuts are expected to affect instruction at the new, $20.855 million building, set for groundbreaking next June.

VanWinkle and architect Butch Reifert, of Mahlum Architects, said cost escalation is a vital component of the project.

The difference between escalating costs to the quarter point, as opposed to the midpoint, of construction is about $600,000, according to projections by a firm hired by the district to help project costs.

The district for its projections used an escalation rate of eight percent annually, though some have estimated that actual rates could reach closer to 15 percent or even higher.

Still, a group that has spent the past nine months evaluating the ever-developing project offered its unanimous support of the latest incarnation.

The Capital Projects Advisory Committee commended planners and urged the district to proceed with the plan as designed, “recognizing that there will, accordingly, likely be a very real need to address various options for additional project funding.”

Those options could include dividing the project into two or three contracts to attract more bidders, pushing some projects into the next bond or the use of non-voted debt, according to a statement read by committee member Chris Van Dyk.

Van Dyk, a self-admitted critic of the school project originally, went on to laud the efforts and said the current design should be built because it meets the needs set forth by the district.

“This building is what it is,” he said. “It’s not a Rolls Royce. It’s not a Cadillac. It’s a great Chevy.”