PEDRO – Rock Hill School Board members awarded a design contract Tuesday for the system’s new football stadium to Triad Architects Inc.

Wednesday, May 17, 2000

PEDRO – Rock Hill School Board members awarded a design contract Tuesday for the system’s new football stadium to Triad Architects Inc.

Triad, the same firm designing Rock Hill’s new schools project, will plan the estimated $1.37 million stadium, which is not part of the other project’s state funding mechanism, Superintendent Lloyd Evans said.

"The board did set aside money previously to ensure we could build a football stadium," Evans said.

The new stadium will double current seating capacity – to 2,500 on the home side and 1,000 on the visitor side – and include a seating area for the band and two concession stands.

For the new schools project, construction materials bids will be opened May 31, construction manager Warren Whitesell said.

Site work is continuing, with Beaver Excavating removing about 6,000 cubic yards of material per day from the construction site right now, Whitesell said.

The site work will not be 100 percent complete until October, but construction crews will have a building pad for the high school by the end of July. The elementary school building pad should be ready by September, he said.

The entire project, which will construct a new high school and consolidated elementary and renovate the current high school building into a middle school, is partially funded through the community.

Area residents approved a 4.28-mill property tax levy in 1998 to contribute about $3.8 million to the more than $40 million project funded through the Ohio Schools Facilities Commission.

Rock Hill board members awarded a bid Tuesday for road work that will enhance entrances to school parking lots and save the district on construction costs.

The board awarded the base bid for improvements to Township Road 169 – now called County Road 169 after county officials accepted it into their system – to Beaver Excavating for $236,615.46.

Work will raise the road to eliminate the steep inclines into the school building areas, Evans said.

It also allows contractors to get rid of some of the excess dirt from building sites, and not have to pay for its disposal, Whitesell said.

After Beaver’s work on the road, the county has agreed to blacktop it and provide stripes and signs, Evans said.

The board also might consider changing the location of an on-site sewage treatment plant to prevent spending extra money on excavation.

In the last couple of weeks, Beaver found some errors in the original engineering of the school site project, Whitesell said.

There is too much dirt on the high school site – 55,000 cubic yards, or enough to raise the current track and football field by eight feet, he said.

Designers could not change elevation of football field without making the slopes too steep, so the only solution seems to be relocating the treatment plant, Whitesell said.

The first option relocates the plant across County Road 169, while the second option relocates the plant across County Road 26.

There are no real cost estimates for either option, but a lift station might add costs to the second option, Whitesell said.

Cost estimates will be available in the next couple of weeks, and will be reported to the board for a decision, he said.