Prior Lake-Savage Area School Board approves elementary renovation bids

Prior Lake American

Five Hawks Elementary and Glendale Elementary will undergo some changes this summer after the Prior Lake-Savage Area School Board approved bids 5-1 for renovations during a regular meeting on Monday.

For both building renovations, the board approved $523,300 to go to Ebert Construction for general construction, $47,750 to Boiler Services Inc. for piping and plumbing, $39,470 to Metro Sheet Metal Inc. for HVAC ventilation and $89,500 to Laketown Electric Corp. for electric work.

For building envelope restoration for Five Hawks Elementary, the board approved $307,369 to American Masonry Restoration for the building envelope and $96,031 to the Door Service Company for window replacement.

American Masonry Restoration gave a much lower bid than the competing companies as the company was not full for the summer whereas the others were, according to a Nexus representative.

For 2018 pavement rehabilitation at Five Hawks Elementary, the board approved $69,125 to Bituminous Roadway.

The total amount of bids was more than $1.17 million. The total is about 14 percent over budget — or about $145,000 — which the district is prepared for, Business Services Executive Director Julie Cink said.

“Where we’re at with our Long Term Facilities Maintenance bond, our district has in the last several years ... actually saved 14 or 15 percent of those $12 million,” Cink said. “We have a little over $1.7 million in unspent dollars with no projects attached to those.”

The projects at Five Hawks and Glendale elementary schools were originally packaged with the construction of additional classrooms at Redtail Ridge and Jeffers Pond elementary schools.

However, bids came back too high for those projects in April for construction to start in the summer. The Five Hawks and Glendale projects were sent out to bid again, whereas the Redtail Ridge and Jeffers Pond projects will be rolled into a larger project — such as the WestWood and Edgewood elementary schools renovations — later on.

With the short amount of time from the referendum in November to the bidding in April to construction in June and school districts competing for the same contractors, the prices were too high, Cink said at a facilities, finance and long-range planning committee meeting in April.

“From the time we were able to pass the referendum and go through the design process ... that all takes time for us to come up with the final design of what that building is going to be,” Cink said.

The projects are being done to help address overcrowding at the elementary levels.

“We’ll continue to lean into the short-term capacity strategies that we had and I feel confident we’re going to be able to manage that,” Superintendent Teri Staloch said at the meeting in April. “We’re still really confident that we’ve got some opportunities ... to handle the capacity issues there.”

Voters in the Prior Lake-Savage Area School District approved a $109.3 million bond referendum in November to cover the cost of a new elementary school, a new building for Bridges Area Learning Center, a two-story addition to Prior Lake High School and six other school additions.

With construction of the new elementary school being delayed one year and now expected to open in 2020, space is running low in the elementary schools — the board is hoping to have a binding purchase agreement for the property for the new elementary school in the next few months, Staloch said at the meeting in April.

The board also approved a design for the WestWood and Edgewood elementary schools renovations during the meeting on Monday. The board saw drafts at a study session in April.

The connection between the schools would consist of a cafeteria and multi-purpose rooms. There will also be new art and music rooms to include more storage and space for a kiln.