The Oak Park and River Forest High School District 200 Board of Education has hired a new architect of record. During an Oct. 16 special meeting, the board voted unanimously in favor of hiring FGM architects to replace Legat as the district’s new architect of record.
FGM, which is based in Oak Brook, has extensive experience working on K-12 projects, in addition to athletic fields, outdoor learning facilities and master facilities plans, according to its website.
Michael Carioscio, D200s’ chief information officer, said during the Oct. 16 meeting that FGM was one of 11 firms that submitted proposals. One of those firms was Perkins and Will, the firm that the board hired to assist the Imagine OPRF working group with creating a long-term facilities plan for the high school.
Board member Fred Arkin said that he was “surprised and disappointed that Perkins and Will did not come out on top,” particularly considering that many district officials and Imagine members have lauded their efforts.
Carioscio said that Perkins and Will was among the six semifinalists. He said that the firms that were among the finalists seemed “to provide better, more complete, more thorough information.”
D200 Supt. Joylynn Pruitt-Adams said that Perkins and Will representatives have been notified that they will have the opportunity to apply to work on Imagine plan construction should the board approve the plan later this year.
Board member Craig Iseli, who sat on the committee that facilitated the selection process, said that “FGM and other finalists we chose were much more focused on the elements of being an architect that were required to maintain our building and take care of it on a go-forward basis,” he said. “Some of the other bids were focused on how they could execute Imagine projects and didn’t focus on how they could be our trusted advisor going forward.”
District officials said that FGM’s contract still needed to be negotiated. Legat, which served as D200’s architect of record for eight years, took a fee of roughly 8.25 percent of construction costs for their design services.
CONTACT: michael@oakpark.com
