New elementary school prepares for opening next year

UPDATE: The Lumpkin County Board of Education voted to approve the name of the new Lumpkin County Elementary School at their December 12 regular session. The school will be called “Cottrell Elementary School at the Cottrell Community Education Complex.”

The new Lumpkin County Elementary School is on track for completion ahead of schedule and within its anticipated budget of $21.6 million, according to updates received by the Lumpkin County Board of Education during their recent November and December work sessions.
The board also responded to public criticism that the new facility’s location could add to traffic congestion on a busy Morrison Moore Parkway.
Chief Operations Officer Greg Trammell began the November work session by unveiling new drone footage of the construction site. The video displayed a dramatic bird’s-eye view of the new elementary school, located at 216 Pinetree Way.
“[I’m] glad to say everything is moving right along, just like we planned. We’re a little bit ahead of schedule and in budget, so I think you’ll be pleased,” Trammell said.
When asked about any unexpected challenges he has faced at the site so far, Trammell responded that “we’ve had some steel in some places that wasn’t right that we had to change but other than that, there’s not been a lot [of problems] for a job that size. When they dug the footing they hit rock and we had to get some rock out of there, but so far we’re doing really good.”
Less than a month later, at the December work session, Trammell reported on the significant progress that had been made on the structure itself ranging from completion of the interior brick work to the arrival of all plumbing and light fixtures.
Trammell also indicated that the new facility’s hallways “are color-specific,” and that a team of school officials had recently met to “help us find the right laminates, plastics, and that sort of thing so it will all go together and be hallway-specific.”

BUILDING DETAILS

“We had a really good meeting this morning with our architect and our furniture provider,” added Lumpkin County Schools Superintendent Rob Brown. “… It’s expensive stuff, but fortunately we planned for it and we’re going to have ‘all new’ in the new building. You never want to move old, broken-down desks into a new building. So it’s going to be a nice situation.”  
At the prior November work session, Brown indicated that costs for the project were staying within expectations.
“Believe, it or not, with the price that we got on that building, as large as it is, we’ve still got some cushion built in,” added Brown. “And that cushion, fortunately, is to our benefit. We had a lot of contingency put in there.”
Brown acknowledged that, while there were still outstanding “purchases we need to make for this building,” the additional expenses have all been accounted for “both in contingency and in our initial planning.”
One of those additional expenses is the playground outside of the new school.
“We’re going to have enough contingency money left to cover that playground cost. And the playground is a construction job in itself, so it’s better if we can keep it in that contingency, so that Carroll Daniel can help coordinate whenever they’re digging footings and putting lines in,” Trammell reported in December.
The elementary school project has an approved Guaranteed Maximum Price of $21,655,808, with $1.2 million in contingency funds approved to handle potential overruns. Any money that is not spent to complete the elementary school may be re-purposed to address other student needs in the school system.

DODGING TRAFFIC

At the most recent work session, school board member Jim McClure, who represents District 3, sought to address comments he has received from his constituents about the potential impact of the new school’s location on traffic.
“When I’m out and about, I have a lot of people tell me ‘This is going to be a disaster for traffic.’ And I just don’t think so, because one, I tell people ‘We’re going to be able to put every car that’s coming to pick up kids, they’re going to be back here,” he said. “There’s no trouble getting in there, off the bypass, and when they’re coming out, they’re going to be regulated by a red light. The only problem I see… is if traffic is backed up down to Moe’s, at the traffic light, and that’s always a bottleneck. I just don’t see that we’re going to have a problem.”
Trammell outlined the steps that school officials have taken to alleviate any potential disruptions at the new school.
“I think we’ve planned this well. We wanted to get our traffic off of the main road, and to get it on these side roads,” Trammell said. “There’s a lot of road space for cars that’s on the property. That’s one thing. I think the second thing is, the improvements in that intersection are going to make it a lot better than it is right now. And the timing… Our take-in and let-out times are not peak restaurant times right there.”
Trammell also noted that moving the elementary school away from the middle and high schools will improve traffic on the other side of town, “where they’re constantly slammed in there for 25 minutes every day.”
Trammell estimated the total number of vehicles involved in elementary school student transport to be 90-110 cars and seven buses.
“I think we could probably fit 300 cars back on [the new] school property,” McClure noted.
Trammell said that the county Board of Commissioner’s recent authorization of a final GMP for the new aquatic recreation  center clears the way for completion of the needed road infrastructure to feed the elementary school.
“I talked to the county with the intersection of the road, and they said they’re going to have it ready,” Trammell said. “They’re going to have it all… re-paved, everything that’s sitting there, all the parking lots, all the roads, the intersection coming in and out of there, all resurfaced and striped and ready to go for us when summer hits. We want the furniture delivered in May.”
Trammell went on to praise the county for their partnership in developing the roads leading to the new school.
“It’s been a good partnership with our Board of Commissioners… they were able to capture the DOT money to do that Pinetree Way, it’s about $650,000 to do that. And then they utilized their TSPLOST money, so it didn’t dig into their regular operating SPLOST money or their general fund money. So it’s been a great partnership which I think has come together for the community, that’s going to make one of the biggest impacts that I can ever remember happening in Dahlonega.”
Superintendent Brown expressed his confidence that everything will be ready in time for the new school’s opening.
“The contractor feels like, with the approval of that [GMP] last week, they’re going to be able to get the bulk of the work done before we open our doors in August. So that made me feel pretty good… We just don’t want to have a wide-open construction site going on when we’re trying to have school start. And we’re not going to be in that situation,” Brown concluded.