Cabarrus board to vote on plans for gym rennovations

The Cabarrus County Board of Education will vote at its next meeting on a recommendation to move forward with designing the revised scope of Northwest Cabarrus High School’s gymnasium addition. If approved, the project could entail the school system asking Cabarrus County Board of Commissioners for about $1.5 million to fund it.

The school board discussed the project at its meeting last week and placed a motion to move forward with the design work on the consent agenda for its next meeting on Jan. 23. If approved, the design work would be completed, and the project would be ready to be bid on when the funding is available, according to documents from the meeting.

The gymnasium addition has been on the list of the system’s projects funded by Qualified School Construction Bonds (QSCB), which must be spent by 2014, said Len Witke, executive director of facilities management for the system.

The recommendation to revise the project comes after code reviews changed the scope of work for the project, Witke said. It also comes after an accident last month in Lenoir, N.C., where a wrestler was left paralyzed because the area for the match did not meet the state guidelines.

“Because of this, the state went back to the rulings and said you have to have 10 feet on either side of the mat (from surrounding obstacles),” said Mike Jolley, principal at Northwest Cabarrus High School, to the school board. “We do not fit those guidelines… (That) causes a great concern for us.”

The high school has since had to move its home wrestling matches to the middle school, he said.

Board members agreed that it was a bad situation.

“We’ve got to do something,” said board member Tim Furr. “I think we would be doing those people over there an injustice if we don’t react as soon as possible.”

Witke presented the board with a list of possible options. The first option did not change the gymnasium’s configuration, and the third and fourth options had costs that went far beyond the budget for the project, Witke said.

The system’s staff recommended the second option to the board, which includes lowering the floor elevation of both sets of existing bleachers to the main gymnasium floor level and constructing the larger addition to the gymnasium for up to 500 more seats, new student lockers and shower facilities, according documents from the meeting.

Witke said that having the bleachers lowered would allow them to be moved back at the floor level and create more space.

The total cost of the second option is about $3.9 million.

The original cost for the project was expected to be about $1.6 million, according to documents from the meeting.

In the fall, the school board approved postponing other QSCB projects which would have replaced the chiller and controls at Beverly Hills Elementary School and developed practice athletic fields at Northwest Cabarrus High, Witke said. He added that the chiller project at Beverly Hills was deemed maintainable for a couple more years, and developing the practice fields is not something that has to be completed immediately.

By postponing these projects, the system gained an extra $850,000 that it can use for the revised scope of the gymnasium addition, Witke said. The remaining amount of money needed, though, is about $1.5 million.

Witke said the staff will most likely not officially ask the county for that money until the budget has been approved for next year.

“I don’t think they’ll be able to make that kind of commitment (until then),” Witke said.

School board members asked about other options like buying a smaller wrestling mat, but Jolley said it would not resolve the safety issue.

Fertenbaugh asked if the project could be designed in phases, and Todd Berg, of Morris-Berg Architects, said phasing was most likely not an option since most of the money involved bringing the project up to current codes.

The board will meet again and vote on this on Jan. 23.

Contact reporter Jessica Groover: 704-789-9152