BRUNSWICK
The former Jordan Acres Elementary School in Brunswick will be demolished between October and December of this year to make way for a new Coffin Elementary School.
The school department’s facilities and maintenance committee met Wednesday with the architect tasked with designing and overseeing plans for the new school.
Coffin’s replacement is estimated to cost around $28 million and was approved by voters in June. Now, the project will go through a long bureaucratic process before ground can be broken.
It will take about six months before the town can secure the necessary local and state permits.
A 12-member building committee will be formed consisting of members from the school board, town council and community members, as well as school department staff. That’s in addition various subcommittees that must be formed.
On Wednesday, Lyndon Keck of PDT Architects told the facilities committee that the project will likely go out to bid in May 2018.
Coffin School will remain in use for about three years. Meanwhile, it will be about another year before the school department knows whether the state will provide funds to repair or replace the adjacent junior high school.
Coffin School’s replacement will be 90,000 square feet, but will be built in an area zoned to house buildings of up to 4,000 square feet. That’s an issue to be addressed by the town’s planning department, according to Keck.
Material left over from Jordan Acres may be used as fill for the new site. Keck noted that reused concrete and other materials from the former high school resulted in a $125,000 savings when Harriet Beecher Stowe Elementary was built.
Structural problems contributed to the unexpected closure of Jordan Acres in 2011 after a ceiling beam cracked, the result of an inadequately designed connection, according to an engineer’s report. The building is now used for storage.
School board member Sarah Singer said a send-off party will honor Jordan Acres School, which she said was well-loved by former staff and members of the community.
Jlaaka@timesrecord.com
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