Hoover school board approves $13.5 million renovation contract for Riverchase career center

The Hoover school board tonight in a special-called meeting agreed to pay $13.5 million to renovate the former Riverchase Middle School for use as a skilled trades and career center.

Bids for the construction contract came in higher than the $11 million that was budgeted, but Superintendent Kathy Murphy said the school system has enough money in reserves to cover the difference.

“Really, that’s why you have reserves,” she said. When you have a worthwhile project that’s going to serve children well, sometimes you have to pull money out of reserves to make it happen, she said.

Stone Building won the contract by submitting the lowest of three bids for the job. Taylor & Miree Construction indicated it could do the job for $14.2 million, while Argo Building Co. submitted a $14.9 million bid.

Stone Building will renovate about 78,000 square feet of the 92,000-square-foot facility, said Bob Gray, the vice president for architecture for Goodwyn, Mills & Cawood, which is the architectural firm for the project.

Stone will redo the mechanical and electrical work throughout the whole building, which the Hoover Board of Education bought from the Pelham Board of Education for $4.25 million in the summer of 2017.

Hoover plans to open the career center in August of next year, initially focusing on five disciplines: fire science, culinary, health sciences, computer science/information technology, and building and construction trades (electrical, heating and air conditioning, carpentry and welding). The building has been named the Riverchase Career Connection Center.

Stone will strip out the floor of the gymnasium and prepare that area for most of the building and construction instruction and renovate a nearby area for welding instruction, Gray said.

The former band room will be converted for fire sciences and will include tearing down one of the walls and building an addition to make the area large enough for a two-bay fire station with a fire engine, rescue vehicle and ambulance, Gray said. That floor will have to be reinforced to handle the weight of the heavy vehicles, he said.

The former school kitchen will be converted into use for culinary instruction, which will include equipment renovations. But the cafeteria also will be used to serve meals to students, he said.

One wing of the school will be completely renovated for health sciences, and perhaps the most extensive demolition and renovation will take place for the computer science/information technology area, he said.

The outside of the school also will get a facelift with a more modern look, and the parking lot will get a new coat of asphalt and be able to hold about 200 vehicles, Gray said.

School officials sought bids on some additional work, including a second parking lot, a steel storage building for heavy construction equipment and some painting, flooring and HVAC work, but they chose not to contract out that work at this time. The steel storage building likely won’t be needed immediately, and the extra parking lot can wait, Murphy said. School officials also believe they can do some of the painting, flooring and HVAC work with in-house personnel, she said.

School officials budgeted about $100,000 for asbestos removal, but the asbestos was not as bad as originally feared, so that should only cost about $28,000, Murphy said.

Asbestos removal is expected to start Oct. 8 and should take about a week, Gray said. Stone should be able to begin work immediately after that, he said. The contract calls for Stone to finish the gym and culinary areas by May 31 and the rest of the renovations by June 30. The first day of school for students is Aug. 7. For each day the contractor doesn’t meet either deadline, the company will be billed $1,500 per day, Gray said.

However, Gray said he doesn’t expect delays, especially considering most of the work is interior renovations.

“This is aggressive, I won’t kid you, but it can be done, and it will be done,” he said.

It helps that the building is unoccupied, said Gary Owen Jr., Goodwyn, Mills & Cawood’s regional vice president in Birmingham.

Murphy said she believes one reason the price was higher than expected is because of the tight timeline for construction. She expects the construction company and subcontractors could be working six or seven days per week at times to bring the project to a speedy completion and might incur some overtime costs as a result.

Assistant Superintendent Ron Dodson, who on Oct. 1 will transfer into a new role as director of the Riverchase Career Connection Center, said he met last week with health science teachers from Hoover and Spain Park high schools about how they can bring their two programs together at the new center. Teachers in academic subjects such as English and math from the high schools and middle schools also met to discuss how to integrate their instruction with the skilled trades instruction, Dodson said.

Also, the school district is holding a career fair for ninth-graders on Oct. 16 at the Finley Center to give students a look at the offerings that will be at the Riverchase center.

Murphy said she talked with a parent today whose daughter was excited about being able to go to the career center next year, which was encouraging because the idea initially was not as warmly embraced as school officials had hoped.

“I do believe this is beginning to resonate with our community,” he said. “This is a big day in the life of this school district to start moving this project forward.”

School board President Craig Kelley said the board is excited to approve the construction contract. He believes this will be the premier place in the state for this type of instruction, he said.