Ground has been broken and utility work is under way on a $2 million expansion of St. Mary Catholic School.
“I am so excited,” said principal Phil Stutey. “I go out every day like a kid in a candy store — ‘What have they done today?’ This has been talked about so long. People are so excited.”
The expansion will consolidate all of the St. Mary classrooms in the 1965 addition. The 1908 building will be vacated. A decision has not been made about what will be done with that building.
The two-story 15,000-square-foot expansion will add nine new classrooms, which likely will be used for middle school students.
The new rooms will include a dedicated music room and science lab.
The portable classroom at the school will be moved to another school in the diocese.
The school’s offices will move to the front of the building, and the current offices will be converted to classrooms for Title I, speech and resource students.
The project is anticipated to take about a year to complete and will be ready for students at the beginning of the 2011-12 school year.
As with all construction projects, there will be some inconvenience during construction.
The St. Mary preschool program, which was located in the basement of the 1965 addition, has been moved to Our Lady of Guadalupe Church.
The program will move back to St. Mary once the construction is completed.
During construction, the alley will not be open for dropping off students.
Students will need to be dropped off at Eighth Street or Ninth Street.
Once the construction is complete, vehicles will enter the one-way street going south off of Ninth Street and then exit through the alley onto Oak Street.
This will allow children to unload and load on the passenger side of vehicles.
The south entrance to the 1965 addition of the school is closed because of construction. Students will need to enter that building at the Ninth Street entrance.
Children may notice the change in the playground the most.
Some playground equipment is being stored and will be moved back to the campus when the construction is complete.
Adults may notice fewer parking spaces.
The school has lost about 35 parking spaces because of the construction project in an area of downtown that already is known for parking problems.
“We are hoping that our neighbors will be neighborly,” Stutey said. ... “We are going to have to use the street we have lost so much of our parking.”
Stutey said the parking issue is a minor inconvenience compared to the reward of new facilities.
“We have to look at the benefit we are going to get,” Stutey said. “We are going to have new facilities when the project is completed. That is something the school has not had in 45 years. It is huge, huge progress.”
Stutey said enrollment is up at the school for the fall, and he credited the expansion.
“When you see progress, it energizes everyone,” he said.
Dondlinger and Sons Construction of Wichita is working on the project. The bid for the expansion came in substantially lower than the projected $2.8 million.
School officials anticipated they would not have enough funds to finish the interior of all the classrooms this year.
However, the low bid means the school was able to include all of its alternates, and the project should be student ready in fall 2011.
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