NCSD looking for developed land

by Carol Crump
Wednesday, January 17, 2007 3:22 PM MST

The search is on for land for school sites, but don't expect to make big bucks selling a vacant lot to the Natrona County School District.

According to the guidelines in a Request for Proposal (RFP) put out by the district for new sites for CY Middle School and a combined Mills/Mountain View Elementary School, the district is only interested in already developed sites of from 8-18 acres within a half-mile or a mile of the schools' current locations.

The district should begin construction on its first foray into school construction, a new Fort Caspar Academy, in February. The 400-student elementary school, which was to be a prototype for other elementary schools in the district, will be built on the second site the district bought for the school.

The cost of the new site is $1.5 million. The school itself is projected to cost $17.7 million with construction contingencies, approximately $8 million more than the cost projected several years ago.

According to Lindsay Donaldson, the district's contract project manager, one of the quirks of the School Facilities Commission (SFC) is that they don't want to provide money to develop an area with streets or roads, water or sewer. When the original site along Wyoming Boulevard purchased for Fort Caspar ran into problems with meeting City standards for streets and safety, a new site in Wolf Creek was selected for purchase. The land along Wyoming Boulevard is now for sale by the district.

A challenging request

Because of the problems with Fort Caspar's potential site, Donaldson said the choices for sites for CY and Mills/Mountain View will be limited to already developed property.

"Part of the criteria for selection will be what it would take to develop the site," he said. "They'll develop the site for us."

Developer Randy Hall said the cost of bringing the district a site that is rough graded, with all infrastructure that provides access and utilities including water, sewer, electrical, natural gas, phone and telecommunications, will be built into the price of the land.

He said other requirements in the RFP, such as traffic improvements like curb walks and traffic signals and mitigation of environmental hazards, could make some land something to avoid.

"All developers are doing is preparing a site for purchase for the school district," he said. "There's not a lot of profit motive."

Putting together the necessary acreage within a short distance from the existing schools -- one mile from CY Middle School and a half-mile from either Mills or Mountain View Elementary -- may add to the site selection challenge.

Donaldson said the district is trying to stay as near as possible to each school's constituent base. Even with schools of choice, most CY and Mills/Mountain View students live close to their schools.

According to the RFP, SFC requirements for the new middle school will be 18 acres. Combining Mills and Mountain View into one school will require an eight-acre site. Donaldson said flexibility on acreage depends on the SFC, but enough acreage for playing fields and keeping students far away from traffic is important.

"The more, the better," he said about school acreage.

Hall expects the district will receive 2-3 land proposals for each school by the RFP deadline of Jan. 19.

"At the end of the day, it will entirely rest on cost," he said. "They've already refined the area they want to look at."

Inflated costs

Once site choices are made, Donaldson said the inflated cost of building schools is a concern. He said Fort Caspar Academy did not have a pricey design and there were a minimal number of features that could be eliminated, but the lowest bid came in at $200 a square foot.

Fort Caspar Academy's overall price was driven up approximately $1 million to $2 million by the addition of a production kitchen that will feed students at 10 other schools, and what Donaldson said was an extraordinarily difficult foundation due to the site, but the school construction specialist from Heering International said he's still seeing construction inflation of 1.2 percent per month in the Denver area.

An elementary school in Glenrock will cost $190 a square foot, and schools in the Colorado Front Range that were built at $80 a square foot in the 1980s are costing $140 a square foot to replace. School construction costs in Los Angeles have topped $400 per square foot.

Donaldson said he expects building a new CY Middle School will cost $25 million to $30 million, in addition to the cost of the land.

NCSD staff and Donaldson are in the process of revising all of the construction cost estimates for the new schools planned over the next 5-10 years. The new numbers will be presented to the School Facilities Commission during the Wyoming legislative session.

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