Cedar Rapids school district making way for new admin offices, bus garage

The bus garage on the site of the Cedar Rapids school district's planned administrative service center will be demolished to make way for the project - which includes a new bus garage.

“It's in the way, it creates (traffic) circulation problems,” Michael Gumm told board members during a work session Monday afternoon. “As soon as the building disappears, a lot of issues get solved.”

The board voted in November to develop the site at 2933 Ellis Rd. NW, at the Edgewood Road intersection, to replace the district's Education Service Center and four other support service buildings damaged by the June 2008 flood. The board also gave final approval at Monday's meeting for the $142,000 purchase of additional land for the project, which will include administrative offices and boardroom, the carpenter, paint, and print shops, and warehouses for supplies and food.

But accommodating all those functions, and public access to district offices, means the present 14,000-square-foot bus barn should go, said Gumm, architect with the Shive Hattery firm of Cedar Rapids and the project's team leader. Board member Keith Westercamp said he'd rather work around it.

“To me, it's too good a building to level it,” said Westercamp. “If we can make use of it, we should.”

“We'd have to build around it, and that old building's in the middle,” said board President Melissa Kiliper-Ernst.

The board viewed an initial concept of the project's layout superimposed over an aerial photo of the site. The new bus lot would be southwest of the present one, with the new maintenance garage south of that. A two-story administrative center and separate buildings housing the warehouses and shops would be farther south, up the hillside. Access to the new transportation center would be off Ellis Road, and a new public entrance to the administrative center would be south of the Ellis-Edgewood intersection.

“We've worked with the topography of the site, and built it into the hillside,” Gumm said.

A repeat of the 2008 flood would affect only the new bus lot. The new transportation center, the building nearest the river, would be 5 feet above the high-water mark.

Board members also discussed their conceptual goals for the project, including energy efficiency. Gumm said he hopes to have drawings of the project by April.

Federal Emergency Management Agency funds will cover $12.466 million of the project's $35 million cost, with the balance coming from the district's school infrastructure local-option sales tax. The project must be finished by May 27, 2012, or the district could forfeit the FEMA funds.