District 97’s architectural firm might oversee the building of the district’s next central office, but the option to bid the project and hire another company remains a possibility.
STR Partners, which has been the district’s architect since 2012, is the preferred choice because of their familiarity with the district, said Supt. Al Roberts, who discussed the matter with D97 school board members at their Nov. 4 regular meeting.
STR representatives met with administrators on Monday to tout their experience with building school district headquarters. Roberts said his team was very impressed with STR’s presentation, including their belief that they can have D97’s headquarters built by June 2016 if the groundbreaking occurs early next summer.
D97 board members agreed Tuesday to put a decision about STR on their Nov. 18, meeting agenda. If the firm is hired, their current contract — which does not include constructing new D97 buildings — would be amended to include work on a new central office, board President Bob Spatz said.
But several board members said a decision to go with STR felt a bit rushed, especially since they received STR’s report the night before that evening.
“I don’t think that a decision of this magnitude should have been wrapped up in this; I would have liked to have seen this [report] rather that just report out on it,” board member Peter Traczyk said, adding that there’s already buzz in the community about who will be working on the new headquarters and what it will look like. Traczyk said he doesn’t want it to look like the district rushed this decision.
He and other board members also noted that the district doesn’t yet own the former Volvo dealership property at 260 Madison St., where their new headquarters would go. The school district struck a preliminary agreement on the property with the village last month.
“We can probably cool our jets a little bit in the sense that A., we don’t even have an [intergovernmental agreement], so we don’t technically own the property,” Traczyk said, also noting that the village would need to do some demolition work at 260 Madison St. that would impact the construction timeline.
Spatz responded that the village doesn’t want to move forward on that work until the school district has a construction firm in place to work with them.
“That is part of the concern in trying to get this done, that we can’t even begin demolition or [environmental] remediation until we have an architect,” he said.Â
Board member Graham Brisben, however, also questioned against moving so quickly.
“What’s the rush?” he said. “We’re going to move into a building, it sounds like, in time for the fall of 2016?”
Roberts, Spatz and board member Denise Sacks responded that delaying a decision also delays the designing, community input and construction bidding phases of the project.
“There are a lot of steps that need to happen and they all take time,” Sacks said.
Spatz agreed.
“We don’t have anyone to lead community discussion until we have an architect,” he said.
If the board decides to open up the project to outside firms, Spatz said that process would take a couple of months because of state requirements school districts are under concerning their capital projects.
Other board members, as well as Roberts, also acknowledged that going that route would significantly push back the timeline.
Undeterred, Brisben wondered if the board’s Facilities Advisory Committee could at least vet STR’s report, still allowing the district to stay on its timeline. Roberts noted that Monday’s meeting with the firm included two FAC members, both with architectural backgrounds and both impressed with STR.
With the FAC meeting next Wednesday, Nov. 12, the board agreed to have the committee vet STR’s report. Spatz also clarified that the board’s two options for Nov. 18, is to either hire STR to work on the headquarters or open the project up to outside firms.