LINN  — At their Aug. 22 meeting, Navigate Building Solutions Senior Project Manager Matt Nigh told Linn R-2 board members that he and Eric Wilson and Taylor Smith of Bond Architects developed a schematic design, which is the first significant milestone of the new middle/high school design.

“Since onboarding the project, we’ve had our surveyor out here doing a topographic survey of the whole site,” said Nigh. “We’ve also hired a geotechnical engineer, and they’ve put together the private utility locates. They’ve also done investigations on the site soils, so you might notice a drill rig out here. They’re just testing the subsoils and making sure we have appropriate sub-grades to build on. We should be expecting a report that will then go to the design team and their engineers’ hands so they can properly design our future building.”

He provided plans showing how the new building would connect the existing middle and high schools to the vocational school.

“The idea is that the space in between our new building and the existing middle school and high school could be fenced off and used as an outdoor classroom,” Nigh added, noting a small connecting corridor between the new addition and the existing middle and high school that will also act as a vestibule and a potential pass-through. We’ll have an access door there as well so people can come in through the corridor in between the buildings and then go into either the existing middle school, high school, or our new high school.”

Board VP Mark Baker expressed concerns about the entry to the new middle school, noting that it’s similar in the design plans to the existing elementary entry. “I’m a little concerned about the way the entry is because unless we’re keeping the two doors that go into the main corridor secure at all times, I would think that we want some additional security,” he said. “I don’t really like the way that this is designed.”

Nigh explained the design allows for a secure vestibule with doors intended to be a buzz-through or pass-through.

Baker noted that students coming out of the main building to the office could potentially open a door to the vestibule. “I get all the good intentions, but that’s not how the kids are going to operate,” he added.

“I mean, if you’re a prospective shooter, if you will, you’re going to make small talk out on the front vestibule there until a kid comes through and opens the door,” said Board President Dr. Shawn Strong.

Baker said kids go in and out of the office all the time to get things they need. “That’s just the way it’s always been,” he added. “I would slide the door over so there was a window on both sides of the secure door.”

Nigh said the design could be reworked to accommodate security concerns without difficulty.

Dr. Strong asked what the new addition would mean in terms of classroom distribution. “We’re going to add three classrooms and some science labs, but nobody’s convinced me that is or isn’t enough, or we’re not going to do a hodgepodge of middle school, high school over here,” he said. “Is there a clean break? Or do we care about that?”

“That will be done by our secondary team, in collaboration with our staff, to really figure out what the best flow is for that, to figure out what works best,” Superintendent Bob James replied. “We’re repurposing the FACS room, for instance, into one of our special education classrooms. So, we’re repurposing some rooms. Will it be perfect? Where sixth, seventh, and eighth are only here, we’ll have some barriers to make sure that there’s not a lot of mixing for that, but we’re still going to have a shared cafeteria, shared band room, and a few special spaces. We’ve talked a little bit about refreshing our existing high school, including the furniture, fixtures, and equipment. We did a walk-through today and talked about how we might match fit and finishes between the two so that there’s not a huge disparity in the environment between the brand-new rooms and the older rooms. Does that answer your question?”

“It answers it but doesn’t make me feel very good,” Dr. Strong said. “I really like to see this laid out.”

Baker added, “I’d like to know where everything’s going to be. “If we’re adding these rooms, are we offsetting it accordingly to make sure we have space?”

James noted the current space is 13,000 square feet. “This is 15,000 square feet, so in the planning process, we’ve accounted for each space and how it’s used in our current basement middle school for an equivalent space, either being constructed or already having been existing in what will be our new building, or buildings, depending on how you look at it,” he said. “We haven’t lost anything. There’s no drop in services. We have more space, and we should be able to have our current programming plus some room for additional programs.”

“But the high school is bigger,” said board member Brett Phillips. “I guess the concern is that there’s definitely going to be classrooms that have to be used in the existing high school building for high school classes. How’s that going to work? I get that the middle school size is the same as the building we’re building, but we aren’t putting the middle school in there, right?”

“Part of our early conversations were that we didn’t want them co-mingle too much,” said James of middle and high school students. “The only way to do that with Ag, art, and CT classes on one side is to make sure that we slide the majority of our high school classes around because otherwise, we’ll put middle school right in the middle of that, and we would be crossing through high school students constantly. So, the vast majority of space will probably be used for high school classes. We talked a little bit about storefronts in some of our hallways. I call it the H — the front and back hall and the crossover. We’ll have some storefronts there that limit just how easy it is to transition between what’s dedicated junior high space and what’s dedicated high school space. There isn’t any perfectly clean way. We’re taking two separate spaces and a lot of specials and adapting them.”

Moving forward, Nigh said the next step would be the design development phase, which will take the project into October. “We’ll reconvene at that point and do the same exercise with an updated estimate,” said Nigh. “We’ll present that to you in October. Then we’ll move into the construction document phase, which will get us to our bid phase in January.”

James said that soliciting bids after the holidays would delay things a couple of weeks, but the overall timeline will not be impacted. “We are going to avoid accepting bids over that time because we think we’ll miss the opportunity, with so many people out for the holidays, to get bids that would be competitive and put us in a (better) position,” James added.

Navigate Solutions anticipates onboarding a general contractor around February. Construction is estimated to start in the spring of next year and go through the summer of 2026.

A look at the schematic design budget with a comparison of the original budget shows construction costs of $7,949,006 ($7,676,000), escalation costs of $158,980 ($230,100, a reduction from 5% to 3%), 10% contingencies of $794,901 ($767,100), special construction costs of $23,000 ($13,000), furniture, fixtures, and equipment costs of $325,000 ($140,000), professional services costs of $1,147,543 ($1,100,652), financing/land acquisition/owner scopes (lease purchases) of $650,000 ($450,000), and miscellaneous costs of $8,000 (unchanged).

Overall, the project cost estimate at this time is $11,090,429 compared to $10,398,752 when conceptualized.

James noted that the total costs reflect everything the district wanted in the building project, plus the new playgrounds and paying off the lease-purchase items (track improvements and new lights and fencing). He added the district would save an otherwise recurring cost of $65,000 per year for the lease purchase, which could be used to focus on salaries and benefits in next year’s budget.

Because the Osage County Commission approved the school’s use of 2012 building codes, Linn will not need a storm shelter, which will save almost $450,000.

James told the board the initial plan was to have a smaller satellite parking lot by the pre-K entrance and another at the end of Wildcat Drive. “We did some clearing on the south side and have a great view over there,” he said. “One of the thoughts in doing that was taking a look at maybe having a mega lot, or a larger lot, or more parking that’s all focused in that one area. So we’re taking a look at the feasibility of expanding our main parking lot. There are a couple of different options. You’re hauling in a lot of fill and raising it, or you’re making a lot that’s at a slightly different elevation. We’re looking at combinations of those lots. We’ve spoken with our design and owner rep, and they are willing to bring ideas and some feasibility in terms of cost and project scope.”