A project to move Tri-Township’s high school from LaCrosse to Wanatah took another step forward Thursday. The school board hired Dan Rawlins of the Rawlins Group to serve as the design criteria developer, at the recommendation of Superintendent Kelly Shepherd.
“Dan is a registered architect who’s been serving in Indiana, serving many school corporations since 1978, worked with a couple large firms in Indianapolis,” Shepherd explained. “He has now recently started his own corporation.”
As part of his agreement, Rawlins will be paid a base fee of $17,000 for work on the request for qualifications phase, response to the proposals, and “progressive design-build services oversight.” He’d then charge Tri-Township $185 per hour for any work beyond that.
The school board also appointed a technical review committee. It will be made up of Rawlins, Dick Bucher, Penny Adams, Brent Condon, and school board members Daron Bruder and Aaron Rust. Its first meeting will be held virtually next Thursday at 6:00 p.m.
The project would add high school classes onto the Wanatah School building for a cost of almost $2.6 million, while the century-old LaCrosse building would close to students in 2022.
A recent heating issue at LaCrosse was also addressed during Thursday’s meeting. Shepherd said the problem isn’t completely fixed yet, but he thinks they’ve got it working well enough to allow students in the building. “There’s a couple parts that could be the culprit that’s causing a door that needs to open to get proper ventilation to get this thing to ignite. And it works some of the time but not all the time, and we’ve discovered if we nudge a particular part along, it will open up, and so I think we can get through tomorrow,” Shepherd said.
Board members agreed to let school officials proceed with repairs. Shepherd said one of the parts would cost about $2,000, while the other would cost about $800. The school’s 1950s-era furnace was one of the major concerns Shepherd cited, when he was making his case last year for the building’s closure.
Shepherd also said Thursday that there hasn’t been any more movement toward renting out office space in the building to a Starke County pipeline services business, and the matter remains “permanently tabled.”
