It looks like March start for school

If all goes well — in other words, if Old Man Winter cooperates — construction on New Hampton’s new school buildings will begin in earnest sometime in mid-March.
New Hampton school administrators and Facilities Cost Management Group officials held a pre-construction meeting with the winning bidders earlier this week to begin setting a timetable for the project that will lead to the construction of a new middle school, competition gym and vocational agriculture and industrial technology center.
“It went very well; in fact, we pushed the meeting up, which I think says something about where we’re at with our contractors,” Superintendent Jay Jurrens said. “I think we’re all ready to get going on this.”
He said officials from Cresco Building Service, which won the bid for the general prime construction contract, hope to begin construction in March, but before then, they plan on “laying down some straw to help with the frost as much as possible. From what we’ve been told, that’s doable as far as our completion date.”
As the general prime contractor, Cresco Building Service will set the schedule for Young Plumbing and Heating, which was awarded the mechanical contract and Shammel Electric, which was awarded the electrical contract.
Jurrens said the School Board is tentatively set to hold a special meeting on Wednesday to discuss the timetable.
He said the district is also gearing up for a second bond sale.
Voters approved the $19.415 million bond referendum in February, but to save interest costs, the School Board only sold $10 million in bonds this past spring.
Jurrens said he expects the other $9.415 million in bonds to be sold either in May or June.

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“There are costs involved obviously with selling bonds so you don’t want to get too piecemeal about it,” he said. “Breaking it into two pieces is good, but you don’t want to go into three or four because then it becomes a wash.”
 
For more of this article, see Friday's Tribune.