LINCOLN -- The school district's plan to build a new agriculture barn for Lincoln High School took another step forward last week when the School Board approved a low bid of $587,914 from Legacy Construction Management of Fayetteville.
The barn will be located on five acres east of the school's agriculture wing.
The pre-engineered metal structure will have 5,046 square feet with 2,500 square feet of enclosed space and 2,500 square feet of open, covered space, according to Ashley Tucker, architect with WER Architects/Planners of Fayetteville.
The enclosed area will be a barn with lab space so students can learn to take care of animals. There will be a feed storage room, office and restrooms. The covered exterior area will provide a space to keep animals in a pen and have a wash-down section.
The process to build a new Ag barn has been going on for about 1 1/2 years.
The school voted to purchase 5.1 acres for $50,000 from R and D Ent., in April 2018, and also voted to retain WER as its on-call architect. WER's first assignment was to design a new agriculture barn.
In September 2018, board members learned preliminary costs for a new barn would be around $756,000. They met in work sessions and decided to reduce the size of the barn to bring down costs.
Tucker returned the next month with a new cost of $617,000, but board members still felt the price was too high.
In November 2018, the board decided to seek its own bids, instead of using the district's construction manager to build the structure. Mary Ann Spears, superintendent of schools, said the district hoped it could build the barn for less through a hard bid process.
Another factor the district considered when planning the project was that part of the land for the barn was in the city and part in the county. The district petitioned to have the county land annexed into Lincoln.
Spears said the district thought the planning process would be simpler if the school did not have to apply to both the city and county for permits and meet other requirements to develop the project.
The Arkansas Department of Education has to approve construction plans and the district spent some time waiting for this approval to come through.
Tucker said the district received seven bids for the project, which he described as an "excellent pool of bidders for a small project."
The school's decision to hard bid the project was successful, Tucker said, because the low bid came in under the proposed budget submitted by the construction manager.
Legacy Construction's bid said the project would be completed by Aug. 1, 2020, but Tucker said company officials have indicated their intent is to complete it as quick as possible.
A representative from Legacy attended the meeting, and he thanked School Board members for the opportunity to work with Lincoln Consolidated School District.
After the meeting, Spears said the school would pay for the new agri barn using money from its building fund. This account presently has about $1.9 million in it.
In other action, the board reluctantly accepted the resignation of Mitch Huffaker as maintenance supervisor. Huffaker is planning to move across state to become a church pastor.
Two teachers were awarded the monthly "Above & Beyond" awards from Sam's Furniture and Fayetteville Area Chamber of Commerce. Rachel Turner, elementary counselor, received the award for September and Debbie Key, an assistant teacher with the ALE program, received the honor for the month of October.
General News on 10/30/2019