Mars Area School District provides update on elementary school expansion plans
MARS — The Mars Area School Board received an update on the latest plans for the expansion of Mars Area Elementary School during its board meeting Tuesday night, Sept. 3.
Jon Thomas, of the civil engineering firm Thomas & Williamson, and Mark Scheller, of the architecture firm DRAW Collective, presented concept drawings for four possibilities for the school expansion.
The four plans differ slightly in areas such as the expanded building, the parking lot area, and plans for student pickup and drop-off. However, the two DRAW Collective representatives strongly recommended the third plan, option C, to the board, as it has the best combination of features from the first and second plans with fewer of the drawbacks of both.
“As soon as we saw option C, we thought that that was the best one,” Thomas said.
The option C plan combines the site plan from option A with the building plan from option B. Under this configuration, the classroom wing of the elementary school will be three stories, while the cafeteria wing will be either one or two stories.
“We’re recommending C,” Thomas said. “The administration is in favor of C.”
A fourth option, option D, is mostly identical to option C. However, option D includes a combined loading dock in the cafeteria wing, and the cafeteria wing is rotated to align with the front of the building. There also is a minor reconfiguration of the parent drop-off loop.
“I don’t know that we’re leaning toward any option at the moment,” board member Aaron Rose said. “Our project manager will make a recommendation, and then we’ll figure out which one’s best.”
Despite their enthusiasm for it, the two DRAW architects noted some complications with option C. They noted that storm and sanitary lines would have to be relocated to accommodate the new expansion, and that some of the walls of the addition will need to double as retaining walls.
In addition, unless an alternative were to be found, an underpinning would need to be installed at the gymnasium wall to lower the floor of the new addition by 14 feet and connect it to the existing building. The estimated cost of this underpinning is $780,000.
DRAW Collective also compared the merits of going with a two-story or three-story building expansion and recommended going with a three-story expansion, as it offered a 4% cost reduction. The building is already three stories high due to being built on a hill, so building a three-story addition would mean less roof area, fewer columns, and a smaller footprint than a two-story addition.
DRAW Collective, a Pittsburgh-based architecture firm, also was tapped by the Knoch School District to draw up the plans for the renovation of the Knoch High and Middle School buildings. Those buildings are under reconstruction and have been since January.
