Gateway to make decision on middle school facility

Gateway administration has recommended renovating a middle school instead of selling it and using the profits to construct a new building.

The recommendation was presented to board members during an Aug. 13 buildings and grounds committee meeting following a months-long feasibility study conducted by Architectural Innovations, a firm hired earlier this year, to determine next steps in the district’s reconfiguration.

The board has discussed options to address decreasing enrollment for years.

Those plans were put in motion when the board hired a real estate company to market Gateway Middle School and asked Monroeville council to rezone the land to increase its sales value as a commercial property. Council never rezoned the property, saying it needed to know what would replace the school.

The 115,000-square-foot building was appraised in January 2018 and listed for sale three months later. The property’s listing didn’t include an asking price.

The idea was to use the proceeds from the sale for the construction of a new building to house sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders. Fifth graders would have been placed within the district’s four elementary schools.

The district has not received any favorable offers for the property, board members have said. Board president Mary Beth Cirucci said the district’s contract with 360 Group, the firm hired to market the property, expires Sept. 1.

“We have no plans to renew (the contract) and the property will be removed from the market at that time,” she said.

A new option, therefore, is to renovate Gateway Middle School for up to $30 million in order to house fifth- through eighth-grade students. Moss Side Middle School, the building situated on the district’s campus property that currently houses fifth- and sixth-graders, would sit unused, except as offices for administrative staff, said Superintendent Bill Short. The board would need to figure out other uses for the building.

The board’s discussion can be viewed in its recorded video, available below.

The recommended plan, Short said, would mean long-term savings to the district and no loss of instructional time at Gateway Middle School during construction. The first phase of renovation would begin possibly by summer 2020 and wrap up by 2021 or 2022.

The plan also means floating a bond and using a property tax increase to pay for it, Business Manager Paul Schott said.

“I’ll be blunt and say it – there will be a tax increase related to that specifically,” Schott said, adding the addition of a $30 million bond to the district’s debt service would be around $1.1 million annually. That gap would need to be filled by increasing the millage rate by 0.49 mills, he said.

That figure, Schott said, was calculated when looking at floating a bond “in a vacuum” and does not account for potential savings that could be realized from closing Moss Side, which Short estimated could be anywhere from $700,000 to $900,000 per year.

A revamped school

Gateway Middle School has a litany of costly problems, said Director of Facilities Robert Brown.

Cost estimates to fix them ranged from $4.7 million for updating both buildings’ code irregularities all the way up to $83 million to build a brand new middle school where Moss Side now sits, according to figures calculated by Architectural Innovations.

To read the study, visit bit.ly/2HkBiqM.

One option included leaving Moss Side Middle School the way it is and renovating Gateway Middle School for nearly $63 million. Those figures were largely attached to the amount of work needed to be done to such a large building operating at 56% capacity, said Superintendent Bill Short.

The option of leaving Moss Side Middle School the way it is and renovating Gateway Middle School is what district administration is recommending.

However, Short said he did not like the sticker price of nearly $63 million for renovating Gateway Middle School.

Cirucci suspects the renovations can be done closer to the $25-30 million range based on work done by other architectural firms explored by the district .

“We received at least six proposals from various architectural firms in the area and in those proposals they provided references and information including prices on new construction and renovations they had done to schools in the area,” Cirucci said in an email.

“Many of them were in a lower price range than Architectural Innovations had estimated. That is why the consensus was that Architectural Innovations was a bit high. If the board decides to renovate (Gateway Middle School) then the requested bond would be set to not exceed 25 or 30 million dollars,” she wrote.

During the building and grounds committee meeting Aug. 13, Short said Gateway Middle School’s square footage could be reduced by eliminating 12 classrooms, bringing down the cost estimate for renovations to around $25-30 million.

The renovation’s plans include “four fingers” – which resemble separate wings that jut out on the property to house classrooms with outdoor courtyards between them. The plans also reconfigured the auditorium and cafeteria spaces, which would also make the school safer to navigate during emergencies, said Rocco Telli, Gateway Middle School principal.

School directors Rick McIntyre and John Bova were wary of the recommendation.

Bova asked what the downsides are to doing nothing to the building.

“Money has to be spent at some point somewhere. We have placed multiple Bandaids on the heating, air, roof – currently the buildings are not up to code, based on the fact that we haven’t touched the buildings in so long,” Short said.

Brown added the district is not “realizing any of the potential energy savings” at either building due to dated utilities equipment.

Final decisions have not been made, including the recommendation presented to board members to renovate Gateway Middle School. Short said the issue would come up again in September’s building and grounds committee meeting.