Without any further discussion on June 25 the school board at Oak Park and River Forest High School voted 6-1 to approve the scope of what school officials are calling Act 3, the demolition and rebuilding of the southwest corner of the OPRF building, at a currently estimated cost of $84.6 million. The schematic design, and the estimated cost was extensively discussed at the school board’s June 11 Committee of the Whole meeting.
Josh Gertz, a school board member, cast the sole vote against the plan to build new and expanded music and arts spaces, as well as some new physical education spaces to replace the West Gym. School officials say the current music spaces and classrooms are cramped, outdated and even sometimes dangerous. In a telephone interview the morning after the vote Gertz explained why he voted against the scope of Act 3.
“I don’t think $85 million is an appropriate amount of money to spend on something like that at this time,” Gertz said. “I support arts, but $85 million is a tall ask before we’ve even completed Project 2.”
Project 2, the demolition and rebuilding of the southeast corner of the OPRF building which includes a new swimming pool and gym as well as other new spaces, is almost finished and will cost approximately $102 million. The ribbon cutting and official opening of the new Project 2 spaces is scheduled for Aug. 22.
While the school board approved the scope of Act 3 last week the vote to officially accept the schematic design for Act 3 was put off until a July 16 special meeting which was scheduled to vote on a new proposal to add some tutoring or academic support positions for the upcoming school year.
OPRF Superintendent Greg Johnson said the delay in voting to accept the schematic design was mostly a timing thing.
“The delay does not affect our planned start date for DD (design development) but now that we know we will be having a July meeting we have the time to rework the timeline to see that the DD is fully completed before the board would need to vote for a potential referendum, if you choose to do so, by the December deadline,” Johnson told the school board.
School officials are targeting an April 2027 referendum in which the school would ask voters to approve issuing bonds to pay for the Act 3 project. The funding for Project 2 was obtained without a referendum by spending down cash reserves and issuing a kind of debt, debt certificates, which are paid out of the school’s operating budget.
The school is using $45.3 million in cash raised by issuing debt certificates, along with $44.2 million in cash reserves and is expecting charitable donations of at least $12.5 million from the Imagine Foundation to pay for Project 2. The Imagine Foundation is also taking credit for helping to get a $3.5 million state grant that can be used to help pay for Project 2 or the new geothermal wells that will heat and cool the new Project 2 space. The school is paying nearly $3.2 million annually out of its operating budget for the next 19 years to pay off the debt certificates.
The cost of Act 3 will probably change once the final design is completed later this year but in an interview with Wednesday Journal Johnson said that the $84,604,977 scope the board approved last week is a hard cap on the cost of Act 3.
“$84.6 is the cap,” Johnson said. “What we are looking for at this point is what can we do to improve the design to whittle that cost down as best we can.”