By Melissa Dunson

mdunson@joplinglobe.com

The actual costs for renovating and adding onto North Middle School will be more than originally estimated, but not as much as Joplin R-8 School District officials thought.

District officials opened bids on the project Wednesday afternoon at the administration building.

Crossland Construction Co., based in Columbus, Kan., submitted the apparent lowest bid with a base proposal of $18.97 million. Crossland also submitted the shortest construction schedule of the four companies that bid on the project. Crossland posed finishing the project within 450 days.

When the R-8 Board of Education approved the plans for the North Middle School project last month, the district’s architectural firm, Patterson, Latimer, Jones, Brannon, Denham Inc. of Joplin, estimated the cost for the 93,000-square-foot addition and renovation at $20 million — $4.5 million more than the board originally budgeted for the project.

“I was pleased,” said new R-8 Superintendent C.J. Huff about the bids. “After the initial estimates with the architects, ($18.9 million) sounds better (than $20 million). It’s more palatable.”

Board president Anne Sharp said she had hoped the bids would come in closer to the board’s original estimate, but she said those estimates were made four years ago during the bond-issue campaign, and construction costs have risen significantly since then.

Sharp said the district does have the funds to pay for the difference, partly because it made more money off the bonds than officials originally projected. Paul Barr, R-8 chief financial officer, said the district made $2.6 million more than originally estimated on the bonds.

According to the bids, the district could cut more than $400,000 from the project by not adding a plant-science room to the building and new fencing on the west side of the school’s property.

The R-8 administrative staff will take the bids, confirm the data and crunch the numbers. Huff will have a recommendation for the board during a retreat scheduled for Aug. 28. The board then will vote.

The plans

The plans for North Middle School call for the existing 60,000-square-foot building to be stripped down to a shell. To that space, 93,000 square feet of new construction will be added. The school will have 25 classrooms, seven special-education rooms, a new gymnasium, a health room, more than twice as many computer labs as the old school, rooms for band, vocal and drama programs, larger art and family-sciences rooms, and a new, larger auditorium.

The current auditorium will become a media center and reading room, and the new auditorium will have space for 730 audience seats and more than 100 students on stage. The new gymnasium will be big enough to hold two sporting events simultaneously. It will seat about 1,000 people.