GAINESVILLE – Members of the Hall County Board of Education got their first real look at preliminary building plans for the proposed Cherokee Bluff Middle School at their work session Monday evening.
Excitement was evident as Matt Cox, Executive Director of Facilities and Construction for the district, made his PowerPoint presentation, but everyone in the room knew the floor plans and elevations they were being shown were nothing more than pictures if two measures don’t first receive voter approval.
"In March, 2020, we will come before this incredible community and we will ask them to do two things,” Hall County School Superintendent Will Schofield recently told AccessWDUN referring to the March 24th presidential primary, which will host numerous other ballot decisions.
“One referendum will be the extension of the current one-penny sales tax, which would pay a portion of this plan, and the second will be to allow us the referendum to sell $250 million of government obligation bonds," Schofield said.
Monday evening Schofield reiterated that situation matter-of-factly to the board: “Nothing happens until we pass a bond referendum in March of 2020, and if we do not pass a bond referendum we will be buying a lot of trailers.”
Cox then guided the board on a pictorial tour of the proposed 216,000-square-foot building, saying the structure’s profile will be unlike any other middle school in the county: there will be two distinct building areas connected by a 30-foot wide hallway.
“The front building is all your support spaces,” Cox explained. That part of the complex would be primarily one-story in height, approximately 87,000-square feet in size, and include administrative offices, the cafeteria and kitchen, a Learning Commons, band and chorus areas, and the gymnasium, among other things.
“And then the classroom wing is actually a three-story stacked building,” Cox said, with one level dedicated to each of the three middle school grades. Cox said the school, which is designed for 1500 students, would likely have an assistant principal assigned to each level, so office space for that administrator is incorporated onto all three floors of the classroom wing.
Part of the challenge architects faced in designing the building is dealing with the topography on the 138-acre site. The middle school will be sited to the right of the current high/middle school building when viewed from Spout Springs Road, but that location will require the construction of several largescale retaining walls to provide a buildable area.
“These are retaining walls,” Cox said as he pointed at the screen. “We’re really fighting to get up on this hill. These retaining walls are…anywhere from 25 to 40 feet tall.”
Schofield agreed with Cox that site conditions present a challenge in building the middle school in a location that compliments the current high/middle school. “It’s not a piece of property that lends itself to a lot of options, but I think it’s a pretty darn good plan,” the superintendent said.
Cox said if the ELOST and bond issuance referendums pass in March, permitting would begin immediately with construction finished in time for the start of the 2022-2023 school year. “It should be very doable in twenty months,” Cox said of the building’s construction.
Schofield said, “Keep in mind this is not the final plan. This is the first good crack at it. We’ll get some feedback from some teachers and make some modifications.”
Parrish Construction Company of Roswell was recommended as Construction Manager/Contractor at Risk for the project by Cox’s staff following bid submissions and interviews in September. The school board voted unanimously to accept Parrish as the winning bidder.
