This is a rendering of the proposed renovations to Chicora Elementary School. Submitted image

KARNS CITY — An architect discussed a planned addition to Chicora Elementary School on Thursday with the Karns City Area School District board.

The board voted at its November meeting to advertise bids to build an addition on to the school. The building has undergone several updates for more than a year now, including a new classroom wing, a separate cafeteria and an all-purpose outdoor playing field.

Eric Ritzert, superintendent of Karns City Area School District, said at the meeting that administrators hope to see lower bids than the initial round received in the summer, which came in too high.

“We’re basically starting today, advertised for a second round of bids,” Ritzert said. “We last advertised in May and received them in June, and they were high. We’re hoping with the changes he articulated today and changes in the market, that we’ll see some cost reductions that will allows us to proceed with the project.”

Anthony Colestock, an architect with Crabtree Rohrbaugh & Associates, gave the school board options in terms of what could be adjusted in the proposed addition to save some money. He also suggested the school district try to lower the number of contractors working on the project.

“This was originally being bid with four separate prime contracts,” Colestock said. “What we thought could save some money from the overhead of those four prime contractors is to take some of the larger subcontractors out of the equation and create new prime contracts for each particular trade.”

Ritzert said the project will still likely cost more than what was initially anticipated. Originally, $18 million had been slated for the project, and bids came back $8 million over the established budget. The bids will be advertised for five to six weeks, set to be reviewed in January.

“We do unfortunately still anticipate that it will be more than 8% of the original estimate, which will trigger another Act 34 hearing,” he said. “Categorically it is a good project. We have a good design, but it’s terrible timing as far as what materials and labor cost. We had to hit pause, so we did.”

An Act 34 hearing is required when a public construction project exceeds 20 percent of the existing school district footprint, according to Colestock. Ritzert said the hearing should take place in February, after new bids come in for the project.