Jonathan Alder is starting the master facility planning process to look at how the district will handle growth over the next several years and an early step in that process will be demolishing the old elementary building at 340 W. Main St. The map shows an overhead view of the property with the front of the building facing Main Street on the left. The red x’s represent what will be demolished or removed. Officials said work would likely not start until spring.
(Graphic submitted)
—
Jonathan Alder officials are gearing up for a more involved facility planning process next year as the district looks to address building needs over the next couple of years.
As growth continues to affect the district, officials are looking at both expanding and updating its campuses to accommodate those increases in enrollment.
Board President Bill McCartney said there has been a bit of work done behind the scenes, but next year, there will be a “lot more visibility.” The district is working to create teams for establishing a vision as well as advising the community on the planning process.
“February will start the educational visioning process where we start looking at what we need and what can be done,” he said. “That’s when we’ll start getting the community included and start that conversation of what are we looking at.”
McCartney said the early stages involve asking school staff, students and community members what they might want or what the district might need as a best-case scenario.
“We want to start with pie-in-the-sky stuff. If money was not a factor, what would we want for our school district? What would give Alder the best tools to do the job?” he said. “Then, since money obviously does play a role, we’ll begin paring down ideas to action items we can do to either existing facilities or new ones.”
At the recent December board of education meeting, Josh Predovich with SHP, an architectural firm in Columbus, presented an overview to the board, which outlined the planning process and what steps can be expected over the next year and next several years.
A major first step in that process, Predovich said, was to receive approval from the Plain City Design Review Board for abatement and demolition of 340 W. Main St. in the village, the site of the former elementary school building. The group received the approval on Nov. 29 and Predovich said if the procurement process can be done by the end of this month, work can start in early 2024.
“Work can probably start as early as spring of next year and I would say, with the abatement and the demolition, you’re probably not going to see the building down and the site restored until late summer is my bet,” he said. “And our expectation is that we’re going to return that site basically to a green lawn. So, we’re going to take the building down and basically grade the whole thing.”
He said with that being demolished, the open space would allow district officials to think about the site’s future usage as they consider enrollment and facilities impacts. The property’s future will then be part of the master planning discussions next fall.
Before that, the educational visioning team that McCartney mentioned will spend much of the spring and summer researching shifts occurring in learning and teaching, determining the impact on Alder students and how facilities might respond to that impact. The community would be brought in at the start of that process and then again in the fall for input, once options for master plans could be presented.
Predovich said the community would be updated throughout the process as decisions are made.
“Every time we made a community presentation, every time that I come here to present to the board, every time that we make a community advisory team presentation, all of that stuff will be fed into our website,” he said.
Finishing the planning process, he added, is also just the beginning of the work. Assuming everything goes according to planning and the proposed timeline, the district will still have a year’s worth of design and two years of construction. Realistically, he said, district officials and community members are still at least five years away from walking into any new buildings.
Far before that happens, the district has to figure out what it needs and how that can be accomplished starting next year.
“These are all the steps that we’re going to go through in the calendar year of 2024,” Predovich said. “And we hope to be coming to the board with that final master plan probably in December of next year for whatever facilities and improvements that are necessary to meet that increase in enrollment.”