Crews hard at work with construction of a cool school

The dust has been flying behind a fleet of earth-moving machines working at the corner of Stillwater Road and West Reserve Drive for more than a week now.

On Tuesday, the real pounding begins.

That's when the first of 896 geo-piers will be driven a dozen feet into the ground to support what will become Kalispell's newest school and the largest school construction project in the state of Montana - Glacier High School.

The subterranean pillars of rock compacted into stocky holes drilled into the soil will support the 229,000 square-foot building that will open for classes in August 2007.

Although the intervening 25 months may seem a long stretch, there's no time to waste in a construction schedule with a strict time budget for every day that passes.

Designs by CTA Architects/Engineers and Swank Enterprises, both of Kalispell, are 100 percent complete and received the school board's stamp of approval last week.

Construction documents come next.

Bidding began in early June, with two of the bid packages - for site work and foundation - coming in at a combined $461,000 below estimates.

That not only allowed School District 5 to add a biomass boiler system to its plans, an ultimate cost-saving measure despite the up-front $313,000 extra expense, but it adds breathing room for a budget that initially was threatening to fall $1 million short of early design specifications.

Another bright spot on the fiscal horizon is an indication that recently skyrocketing steel prices have at least stabilized, project engineer Corey Johnson of CTA Architects said, even if they have not declined.

Steel, precast and masonry work is next in line for bid packages on the project, with a bid opening date of Sept. 15. The final bid package will be opened on Dec. 1.

Last November, voters approved $39.8 million in bonds to build the new school and renovate Flathead High, with $4.5 million now earmarked for Flathead. Adding in a $480,400 grant for the boiler and another $663,000 from bond investment interest and district funds, it leaves the project at nearly $41 million.

Construction is beginning with the school gym, designed to accommodate 2,000 seats initially and 3,500 if money becomes available to add the seating in the future. That's big enough, Johnson said, for a Class AA district tournament or smaller school tournaments, but not for a Class AA state tourney.

With that portion of the site already graded and ready for the geo-piers, closely followed by footings and foundation walls, a steady line of dump trucks, graders and rollers continue moving and compacting the 90,000 yards of dirt required on the project.

Bringing the center section of class space and commons up to grade with the gym, for example, means workers are bringing that stretch of ground up another seven feet.

Electrical, cable TV and power lines already have been roughed in, with sewer and water work scheduled this week.

Mechanical, electrical and drains will go into the foundation gravel fill, then slabs should be poured in October. Paving will come in late September or early October, as well, giving workers clean surfaces for work on walls and roofs throughout the winter.

CTA and Swank are looking for economies at each step - by reserving topsoil from the building site for use on practice fields and other landscaping, and by shopping around for good, cheaper fill dirt that would allow them to sell excess topsoil and offset costs.

Negotiations continue between the school and the city of Kalispell on the number of required parking spaces.

Initially, the city asked for 1,900 based on maximum potential need. The school put in a request for 850, citing a management plan that could incorporate parking lots at nearby box stores.

The city countered with 1,140, the current working number for site plans.

Johnson said the school could expect to generate between 1,000 and 1,200 vehicle trips in a day from its faculty and 1,200 students within two years of opening. That compares with 12,000 trips at a typical box store - but the store's traffic is spread throughout the day, whereas school trips would be concentrated primarily to two times per day.

Traffic safety concerns on West Reserve Drive have been at the forefront, particularly since a teenager lost her life recently when a dump truck failed to stop at an intersection and struck the car she was driving.

Adding school traffic on West Reserve, a relatively narrow paved road with steep ditches and a 55 mph speed limit, almost certainly will compound the problem.

To mitigate concerns, most traffic will be directed onto Stillwater with its lower speed limit and lower current traffic volume. The school is asking the Montana Department of Transportation for a lower school speed limit along West Reserve - typically the state allows a drop of 10 mph - and will allow no left turns directly into or out of the school site along Reserve.

In addition, when the U.S. 93 bypass is in place - at a still uncertain date - only local residential traffic will be allowed on West Reserve and all school traffic will be funneled onto a future city street planned for the school site's southern border.

In addition, Stelling Engineers of Helena, hired by CTA as a traffic design consultant on the project, recommended a four-way stop sign at the junction of Stillwater and West Reserve.

"The street already is extremely busy," Swank's Shawn Baker said of West Reserve, "so we are proceeding with caution. We will need to get infrastructure help. We can't be the sole solution, but we certainly can't stand back and say we will do nothing."

A recent push to include the proposed Glacier Performing Arts Center in Glacier High School - a partnership that would have bumped up the auditorium to a college-level performing arts hall, and added an expanded lobby and black box theater - appears to have died for lack of some $15 million in private funding commitments that were needed by Friday.

For a complete look at school plans, visit www.yournewschool.com

In addition, the school district, CTA and Swank have developed a Glacier High School traveling display with banners, model and computer-geneated imagery. See it this week at Three Rivers Bank on Meridian, then next at the Flathead County Public Library in Kalispell. It also will be displayed at a booth in the Northwest Montana Fair.

Reporter Nancy Kimball can be reached at 758-4483 or by e-mail at nkimball@dailyinterlake.com