Construction crews are busy finishing the new media center in order to stay on schedule. (CLICK TO ENLARGE) Jennifer Connic for WestportNow.com
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Staples High School students will have all of their new classrooms finished by February.
Staples Building Committee Dan Kail said construction is on schedule for the second half of the new academic wing will be available to students and staff after the February vacation. The new wing features world language and math classrooms.
It remains unclear, however, if the new media center will be done finished on schedule, Kail said.
“We hope it will be done, but it needs a lot of work,” he said. “I can’t promise it will be done in February.”
Kail said some of the problems are because of what workers found when they began renovating the area, which is part of the reason for the additional $2 million necessary for the project.
Next month the Staples Building Committee will ask the Board of Finance for an additional $2 million to complete the project.
Susan Chipouras, Staples project manager, said Turner Construction officials, who are overseeing the project, vastly underestimated how much it would cost to renovate the old building.
Workers finish the windows to the greenhouse in the new academic wing at Staples High School. (CLICK TO ENLARGE) Jennifer Connic for WestportNow.com
“They based their figured on their experiences with our other buildings, and they were overly optimistic,” Kail said. “Then when we had to add things, it was more expensive. We found what was there was not usable. We couldn’t tell that until we opened the walls.”
The media center, Kail said, was the biggest of the problems although there were some problems in other areas.
Construction crews had to gut the media center and start from scratch, he said.
Committee officials hope the work is done as soon as possible, Kail said, because they are anxious to get to work on demolishing the two remaining old academic buildings.
The entire project—new construction, renovations, parking and other site work—should be completed in time for the 2006 school year, he said.
