Economy helping District 35 construction project

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District 35 finance and operations director Jason Edelheit said the Art Deco-era trim to the Young Auditorium's doomed stage will be moved to the hallway entrances. |IRV LEAVITT ~ SUN-TIMES MEDIA

Updated: February 20, 2012 8:57AM

“This is a great time to be able to do an improvement.”

Finance and operations director Jason Edelheit of Glencoe’s School District 35 counted the bids coming in for the summer’s Central School project: 1, 2, 3, 4 ... 9, 10, 11.

“We normally never get 11,” he said. “Usually — three, four, five.”

What was also unusual about the bids was that they were so close to each other. Bergen Construction’s low bid of $1,081,000 was within 15 percent of the highest bid.

Either architect Green and Associate’s request for proposals was especially well-written and easy to follow, or the economy is pushing contractors to sharpen their pencils in a period when few governments have money for projects they can win.

A little of both, Edelheit said. Whichever, it was nice: the work had been estimated at $1.5 million.

District 35 has money from 2009, when it refinanced general obligation bonds. The intention was to get $8.5 million out of that bond sale, paid off in future taxes, but when the district’s bond rating was increased to triple-A, it got $9.2 million, instead.

The project will mostly take place this summer, moving summer school to West School. It changes several annoying things about the school that get in the way of teaching and learning.

One change will open up the foyer and the school offices, giving people room to wait at the desk, and kids sent to see the assistant principal a place to cool their heels out of sight of the big glass windows.

Pupil washrooms will be improved with new fixtures, and the remaining old windows in the cafeteria will be brought up to environmental standards.

Teachers’ workrooms will also be enlarged and improved.

The cafeteria floor will be replaced, too. Ancient, long-unused floor drains decades ago caused the floors to dip four or five inches toward them.

Edelheit said when custodians wash those floors around those drains now, “they Saran Wrap and tape ‘em up” to avoid getting water into areas they might never be able to remove it from.

The ground-floor Young Auditorium, where the Board of Education meets, will be expanded through the removal of its stage, which Edelheit says is little-used.

The new shape of the foyer will include an alcove where a person trained in security will sit and check people coming in, relieving the front office of that duty.

The person will check identification against a
sexual predator database and a listing of outstanding criminal warrants, Edelheit said.