Knik school design underway

PALMER — One thing you can say about the Mat-Su Borough is it sure doesn’t waste much time when it comes to building schools.

“It’s been such a short timeframe,” said Gary Wolf, the architect contracted to design the Mat-Su Borough School District’s next school. “The building is supposed to bid for construction next February,”

Work is scheduled for completion in advance of an August 2015 opening. The district’s plan is to build the school on 110 acres off of Knik Knack Mud Shack Road, a half mile north of Mile 11, Knik-Goose Bay Road.

“It is, like a lot of property out there, fairly wet,” Wolf said.

So, when subtracting out the wetlands, which can’t be built on, the site shrinks to 60 acres. On those 60 acres the borough needs to fit a high school, a middle school, parking, an access road, a bus loop and ball fields. Oh, and a 185,000-gallon water system.

“You can’t run a fire suppression system on a well,” Wolf explained.

For now at least, the district isn’t planning to build both schools, but instead opening a combination middle/high school with 250 high school students and 250 to 300 in middle school. When it comes time to build the second school, this first building will be used as the middle school.

Still, Wolf said his design has to leave room for the high school the district intends to build in the future. Even with 110 acres, space is at a premium.

“Squeezing everything in has been challenging,” said the borough’s project manager, Bob Bechtold.

As Wolf and Bechtel spoke, they referred to a mock-up of a possible site plan. The two schools resemble the S-shaped Tetris pieces, both about equal size. Football and soccer fields were on one side of the schools, baseball fields on the other. Parking lots covered most of the rest of the useable space.

Beyond the timeframe, there are other challenges. Bechtold said he and the design team are hoping to get the local community on board, and toward that plan to have a public meeting when the project is further along. He said there are already concerns about traffic.

“The additional traffic from this school does not warrant a light on Knik-Goose Bay Road,” he said.

That determination came straight from the state Department of Transportation. Knik-Goose Bay is a state road, after all. Wolf said that determination will likely change when the second school goes in.

“Then they’ll have to be thinking about a light,” he said.

Another challenge? Utilities.

“That’s been occupying a lot of Bob’s mind, actually,” Wolf joked.

Bechtold confirmed that indeed it has.

“Since I don’t have the money to do it,” he said. “School bond money can’t be used off the site.”

It’s a tough nut to crack. The borough assembly, in a resolution approving buying the school site, estimated costs to upgrade roads and run utilities to the site at $1.32 million, and it would be good if that money showed up sooner than later.

“It’s always good to have that out there before the contractor starts working,” Bechtold said, noting that running a lot of diesel generators and equipment can get expensive.

Finding that money is for the politicians to worry about. For now, Bechtel said, he has to focus on that timeline.

“We are all on track,” he said.

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