Borough to discuss new Knik-area junior/senior high school

MAT-SU — The Mat-Su Borough says it’s the largest school project in 25 years, and on Thursday the borough wants to talk to you about it.

“It’s mostly an informational meeting,” said Bob Bechtold, project manager for the Joe Redington Sr. Jr./Sr. High School project. “We’d rather have (residents) hear it from us rather than hear rumors and things that aren’t correct.”

He said the meeting is a project update. The architect has the 96,000-square-foot, $65-million building 65 percent designed.

“Most of the meeting will be Gary Wolf from Wolf Architecture explaining, ‘here is the building and this is how it’s going to function,’” Bechtold said.

The school district staff also will be there, talking about things the school will feature in terms of educational programs.

Bechtold said programs that have needed to be designed into the building include physical education (there will be main and auxiliary gymnasiums, as well as an artificial turf football field and natural grass practice and soccer fields), shop (a small-engine shop, welding shop and a wood shop) and a computer lab.

Bechtold said the school’s library will often be available in the evening for community use.

“Once you have us go outside of the core area of Palmer and Wasilla, then more of a community use is expected,” Bechtold said. “There aren’t other options. It will be the biggest building in that area for a good distance.”

Also on the list of things the meeting will discuss is art.

“With every state school project you get 1 Percent for Art that kind of comes from a federal program,” Bechtold said. The ‘1 percent” refers to the portion of the project’s cost dedicated to art used to decorate the building.

He said the borough hasn’t selected or commissioned any art, he just wants to let people in on the process.

“Basically, we just want to let people know that if you want to be involved in the process, this is how you do it,” he said.

He said the borough is soliciting requests for proposals for a firm willing to provide both construction management and general contracting work on the project. The way it will work, he said, is the firm will work with the borough through the rest of the design process, helping decide on building materials and the like.

The firm would provide the borough “more of a hands-on knowledge of what it costs to build stuff,” Bechtold said.

The same firm would then build the building. The borough’s using that process now on its chalet at Hatcher Pass, Bechtold said.

Of the many questions still outstanding is the one about access to the school site, which is off of Knik-Goose Bay Road.

Bechtold said he’s hopeful construction work can go on while the borough works to secure the money it needs for access. In October, voters approved a proposition to sell bonds to upgrade the road to the level it would need to be to service a high school. But that was just half the money. The $1.5 million in borough bonds needs $1.5 million in state money to match it. Also needed is funding for utilities.

“We can’t use the bond money to work on utilities off the site, so the Legislature is working on getting some money,” Becthold said.

Contact Andrew Wellner at 352-2270 or andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com.