Work begins on new Board building

A little over a year after their building was destroyed by fire, the Willoughby-Eastlake School Board is making progress on a new permanent home for their offices.

After the March 14, 2017, fire left the building at 37047 Ridge Road in Willoughby unusable, district employees set up temporary offices in the School of Innovation at 32500 Chardon Road in Willoughby Hills until a permanent solution could be found.

In January, the board approved the purchase of a longtime empty office building at 35353 Curtis Blvd. in Eastlake, for $1.2 million. And crews started work on the new building on June 14.

Due to the building using hot water heat and its not being winterized, the pipes froze and burst

while it sat vacant. Crews are demolishing the entire contents of the inside of the building with the exception of the elevators, stair wells, and electrical and mechanical rooms. Superintendent Steve Thompson noted, the elevators and stairs have been inspected, repaired, and certified for use.

The building will basically be stripped down to a shell with just the outside walls remaining before renovations begin, according to Thompson.

Due to the age of the building, asbestos abatement

was not an issue and that helped save money on the project, Thompson said.

The superintendant is expecting the project to progress quickly and that the board will be able to transition to the new building somewhere around November or December.

The plans for the building include the School Administration which will be located on the fourth and fifth floors, record storage on the third floor, professional development on the second floor and the Board offices on the first floor.

Additionally on the first floor will be a community room that will be accessible from the outside with a keypad. The community space

has access to a sink and can seat about 100 people.

“Different groups can use it for meetings. We are just making that space available to the community,” Thompson said. “We will use it sometimes during the day as well but mostly its for community. There is no rental fee just a custodial fee to clean up,”

“We are excited,” Thompson said. “It gives us the space that we need in a building. Although our old offices had amazing character and this one does not have that, as far as efficiency goes, its way more efficient and the location is perfect,”

According to Thompson the location of the new building puts the administrative

offices just about dead center in the school district.

Thompson notes that from a safety perspective, the location is ideal.

“If we had an issue at one of our schools, our command center would be here which is essentially located in the center of the school district,” Thompson said. “We would take over the board offices and use that as our command center for any kind of catastrophic event, so that is beneficial.

Thompson believes the new location is also convenient for the community with the building located right off the main highway.

“So there are a lot of reasons that this building works well for us and obviously being

under budget was one,” Thompson said. “I knew we were trying to be under budget but trying to and actually executing it are two different things. So to actually have that come to fruition is a really nice bonus for us.”

Thompson said moving into the Eastlake building also was the most efficient route to go as the board weighed the cost of a new construction versus renovation a current building.

“It’s costing about $112 a square foot here. A new build is probably about $225 to $250 a square foot,” the superintendent said. “So our budget for here was $6.3 million and we came in at $5.4 million, so we saved roughly about $900,000 under budget.

“Those funds will be used to improve our other buildings in the district.”

At that time the move to SOI seemed the best solution since the building was only half utilized, but additional grade levels have been added to the school each year which means more students occupying more space eliminated the possibility of locating board offices there permanently.

The School Board had to delay a decision on relocating the offices to a permanent location until a settlement with the insurance company could be reached. The board eventually agreed in January to take a $8,700,011 settlement offer.