Former Hy-Vee building plans coming together for schools

Thursday night's Newton Community School District forum was devoted to elementary school reconfiguration possibilities.

A few blocks away from the forum, held at the Newton DMACC Campus, lies a building that's set to be the future home of the district's administration offices, professional development rooms, the new Disciplinary Alternative Program and the Basics & Beyond program.

Known by some as “the old Hy-Vee building,” the structure at 1302 First Ave. W. was purchased in November by board decision at a cost of about $440,000. The 5.38 acre property is adjacent to the district's technology building and transportation center, and features a 20,00-square foot main building, paved parking, an open, roofed storage facility north of the main building, and a dilapidated “quonset hut” building near the street.

The latest drawing from FRK Architects and Engineers, dated Feb. 20, shows a large number of separate storage spaces, to go along with three regular classrooms, a large dividable space for the DAP students, a computer lab, a fitness room and a three-section dividable room for conferences and professional-development events.

At Thursday's reconfiguration forum, Callaghan said the district is probably about one year away from being able to move offices into the building.

Callaghan made a presentation at a December board meeting with a similar rendition of what the inside might look like. The building will not be used to directly replace any current regular schools, but it will help free up some classroom space at the recently re-designated Emerson Hough building.

The board voted Jan. 12 to re-open Emerson Hough as a regular school after closing it to students in 2010. The superintendent said one aim is to no longer have the Basics & Beyond alternative school students, along with any other teenage students, occupying the same Emerson Hough building as the preschool, which is the current arrangement.

Callaghan said the main 20,000-square-foot building on the former Hy-Vee site has been inspected for structural integrity, and the school district can use it. The inside has been gutted in terms of removing old equipment, so the district can renovate and use it for a variety of purposes, and a specially qualified crew recently removed all the asbestos from the main building.

A top-end renovation price of $2 million for the building was given at a recent school board meeting. However, a formal cost estimate for renovation has not been discussed by the board at a meeting yet.

As for how the building affects future renovation plans, that's not clear yet. The board shot down a motion to re-designate the Berg Complex as grades 5 through 8 at its well-attended Feb. 9 meeting, and held a public forum on reconfiguration Thursday. A similar forum is slated for Tuesday at 6:30 p.m. in the second-floor meeting area of the DMACC Newton Campus.

The board is scheduled to hold a budget workshop at 6:30 p.m. Monday at Emerson Hough, with the public allowed to attend but not to speak. The board's next regular meeting is at 6:30 p.m. Feb. 23 at Emerson Hough.

Contact Jason W. Brooks at 641-792-3121 ext. 6532 or jbrooks@newtondailynews.com