Chardon Schools Board of Education discussed plans for the recently-purchased Washington Street property with School Assistant Superintendent for Business Affairs Steven Kofol Nov. 20.
Chardon Schools Board of Education discussed plans for the recently-purchased Washington Street property with School Assistant Superintendent for Business Affairs Steven Kofol Nov. 20.
Kofol highlighted phase one of the project, which will cost $780,000, during his capital improvement project presentation, noting the property will be the future site for transportation and business affairs.
“The ultimate goal is to move the mechanics out there, the drivers and all the buses. We will have an additional space behind the high school for whatever we need to do,” Kofol said. “Most likely, we’ll be bringing parking back over for students and/or staff, shuffling some of the parking lots around and see how we can most maximize that space.”
On May 2, school board members approved the purchase of the property for nearly $1.7 million, which encompasses approximately 21,000 square feet of building space on about 6.56 acres of land.
Hanlon said the project is being broken out into a multi-phase approach.
“Steve and I did attend a meeting with state Representative Sarah Fowler Arthur and Representative Steve Demetriou and there were a number of public entities at that meeting at the Henry House. This was in relation to the Ohio legislature’s capital budget,” Hanlon said. “The reason that drew us to that meeting is the governor and Legislature incorporated into the capital budget an appropriation of $700 million to do one-time, impact, community-based projects that will make an immediate difference in communities. We attended the meeting and shared this Washington Street plan with representatives.”
Having other voices in the Legislature promoting your project is equally beneficial to having it survive the legislative process, Hanlon added.
“That would really help us accelerate these phases,” he said. “I think we’ve got a great story to tell with respect to safety, students crossing, getting a dual entrance, improving the whole campus traffic flow, creating a second entrance to the high school for security purposes and all those kinds of things.”
The board passed a proposal with ThenDesign Architecture for improvements to the Washington Street property for $350,000.
The existing buildings on the property will be re-purposed into administrative offices for transportation, building affairs, food service, district IT, district maintenance and a bus repair garage, according to the proposal.
“This proposal with TDA is for the full scope of architectural services necessary to complete that project. We haven’t fully identified all of the sources of revenue to complete that $6 million renovation for full completion of that facility at this point,” Hanlon said. “TDA understands that and has committed that they would only build for services rendered. We have resources identified to complete phase one, which really creates the foundation, and then we can continue to tackle the other phases.”
