Kendall approves $16.4M in school construction bids

District will have ground-breaking celebration Oct. 15

Photo by Tom Rivers – Kendall Board of Education President Nadine Hanlon, left, smiles with Julie Christensen, school district superintendent, after the Board of Education accepted seven different construction bids this evening for upgrades to the elementary and junior-senior high school.

KENDALL – Two-plus years of planning for a major capital project at Kendall Central School reached a big milestone this evening when the Board of Education approved construction bids for the project.

The seven different contracts totaled $16,416,433. That was under the district’s projections and means the district won’t have to eliminate pieces of the project to stay under budget.

The district will celebrate the ground-breaking of the project with a 6 p.m. ceremony on Oct. 15 just before the Board of Education meeting. The ground-breaking will be behind the junior-senior high school near the soccer fields. That area is where an addition for the cafeteria and kitchen will go.

The board approved the following bids tonight:

General trades – Allied Builders, Inc. of Brockport for $4,987,000.
Roofing – Elmer W. Davis of Rochester for $5,782,177.
Drywall – Accurate Acoustical Corp. of Victor for $1,144,000.
Plumbing – Michael A. Ferrauilo Plumbing & Heating of Rochester for $468,000.
HVAC – Landry Mechancial Contractors of Le Roy for $2,253,500.
Electrical – Kaplan-Schmidt Electric of Rochester for $1,189,000.
Controls – Trane of Rochester for $592,756.

When the bids were approved, Board of Education President Nadine Hanlon cracked a wide smile. She was a student at Kendall not long after the open classrooms were constructed. The project will make all of the classrooms enclosed, as well as tackling numerous other upgrades.

“It’s very exciting,” Hanlon said. “It’s exciting for me to see the transition.”

The project includes new roofs for both school buildings, as well as energy efficient improvements, heating and ventilation work, and updated security measures. Both sites will also see improvements to parking lots and sidewalks.

The junior-senior high school was built in 1971 in an “open classroom” model that didn’t include contained classrooms. The school includes partitions to try to reduce noise and hallway distractions. The capital project would give all the classrooms four walls and their own door.

Kendall residents approved the $25 million capitol project in May 2013. The district has been working with the State Education Department since then on the final designs for the work.

The construction bids do not include costs for architectural fees, construction management, legal fees and other non-construction costs.

Contractors are scheduled to start work on the project Oct. 27, beginning in the back cafeteria of the junior-senior high school, as well as some of the underground infrastructure work at the elementary school.

Crews will continue to work in wings of the junior-senior high school during the winter and spring, with contractors busy next summer so the buildings are ready for the new 2015-16 school year next September. The project will be substantially complete then, with the final work planned for the summer of 2016.

The capitol project will be 90 percent funded with state aid. Kendall’s local share already is saved in a capital reserve account.