The bid package for Oak Park and River Forest High School’s nearly $102 million Project 2 hit the street last week.
Contractors will have a month to bid on the work involved in the project as the bid opening is scheduled for Feb. 16.
At its Jan. 11 meeting, the OPRF District 200 Board of Education voted 6-0 to approve an estimated budget of just less than the $102 million it planned for Project 2. The exact cost will not be known until the bids are opened. The board will not vote to award the contracts until March, but it has already hired Gilbane Building Company to manage the construction.
In order stay within the budget for Project 2, which consists of demolishing the southeast corner of OPRF and rebuilding it with a new swimming pool, third-floor gym and other new spaces, architects had to make some minor cutbacks and shaved off 13,000 square feet from the project. The square footage of the project was reduced to 174,500 square feet from the 187,500 square feet presented in the schematic design the board approved last year. That square footage had increased to approximately 199,000 square feet in a design development presentation made to the board in August. One classroom has been cut from the design.
The cutbacks include reducing the seating capacity of the observation balcony of the new swimming pool by 12 seats, reducing the estimated capacity to 408 people from 420. A more significant cutback was to leave a new training room out of the base bid package.
The budget that was approved eliminates fourth-floor space that was going to be used for a wrestling room or for shelving and storage. Instead, the mechanicals will be placed in what would have been the fourth floor, allowing a low roof.
The project manager pointed out that the fourth-floor space is anticipated to go away eventually when and if the district ever does what is called Project 5 in the future. The wrestling room, which had been planned for the fourth floor, is being moved to the second floor and will also be used in a multipurpose room. That room will only accommodate two wrestling mats instead of the three mats that the fourth-floor space would have accommodated.
Board member Fred Arkin, who also coaches girls wrestling at OPRF, said he is not happy about the cutbacks, especially leaving the training room out of the base bid package.
“I just don’t know how we can build what we’re going to build, which is primarily, you know, for a substantial amount of athletics and not have an adequate athletic training facility for our student-athletes,” Arkin said before the vote on Jan. 11.
Arkin said that a training room, but in an undefined space, was always part of the Imagine Plan for Project 2.
Interested contractors also will submit supplemental bids for an approximately 2,000 square foot training facility. The training room will be included in Project 2 if the base bids come in below expectations.
Other budget cuts
At the Dec. 7 school board meeting, where the latest plans for Project 2 were released, Arkin groused about the cutbacks.
“I kind of feel like Ralphie in ‘A Christmas Story’ waking up in the morning and getting a squirt gun instead of his Red Ryder BB gun,” Arkin said at the Dec. 7 Committee of the Whole Meeting. “I feel like what was presented to us in August was unrealistic. It could not have been anywhere near what our budget was. I’m very upset that there’s been so much change. We’re losing 13,000 square feet.”
Other cuts call for foregoing the renovation of the South Hallway corridor, an improvement that the school board had approved last year. This is expected to shave approximately $400,000 from the cost of Project 2. Another major cost-saving move was the decision to use pillars in the swimming pool area to support the floors above it instead of an overhead steel truss that would have allowed for an unobstructed view of the pool. That decision will save millions of dollars, according to Alyson Sternquist, the lead architect for Project 2.
Stenquist also said that designers have cut back on some finishes for the spaces.
Board members have made clear that that they are most interested in maximizing usable space, not eyepopping finishes or fancy design elements.
“We are looking for the heavy-duty Chevy, not the Cadilac,” Arkin said. “We’re looking to have a space that will last a very long time. All of the extras that can be added on later, whether it’s interior design, whether it’s decoration, whatever, those always can be added on later. The actual structure itself is what’s most important.”
At the Dec.7 meeting, school board president Tom Cofsky emphasized that the board wants to stay within its $102 budget.
“We don’t have a bottomless well to pull from,” Cofsky said.