Plans are moving ahead for Knox High School’s new vocational wing. The school board last week agreed to hire Moake Park Architectural Group of Fort Wayne for a cost of $200,000, according to Superintendent Dr. William Reichhart.
“They’re in the preliminary stages of design and working with us as administrators and teachers, to try and figure out exactly what this space is going to look like on the inside,” Reichhart says. An official contract with Moake Park will be up for approval Tuesday.
Reichhart says the architects are looking at three possible locations for the 10,000-square-foot addition: the high school’s southwest corner, north side, or east side. The new wing would house welding and robotics, as well as the planned ag program and possibly other future programs. Reichhart says the school will continue to work with the SCILL Center.
The project will be funded with leftover bond money from the school corporation’s current building project, while federal COVID-19 relief will be used to help pay for the HVAC system, according to Reichhart. “We will be moving students from the middle school and putting them in a state-of-the-art welding facility,” he explains, “and the air quality for that state-of-the-art facility will be so much better that it will qualify for part of those ESSER grants.”
Reichhart says the school board officially agreed to keep using Larson-Danielson as the construction manager as constructor for a cost of about $90,000.
