Coal City District Unit 1 mulls over options for intermediate school in town hall meeting

While Coal City Intermediate School students spend this year, the next year and potentially further years learning at Coal City Elementary School, the district is left once again with options for getting them their own school.

For now, however, 108-year-old Coal City Intermediate School sits empty with the gym walls and ceiling held up by scaffolding, additional supports, and wall braces to keep it from coming apart further.

Options for the school were laid out at an town hall on Wednesday, Jan. 15.

Coal City Unit 1 Superintendent Chris Spencer said maintenance discovered the crack in the north gym’s wall in August and the district believes the damage reached the extent it did because of a July windstorm that damaged many of the homes and buildings near the school.

“If you’re familiar with that gym, it has built-in bleachers,” Spencer said. “It’s a lovely gym, a beautiful old one, but it was the built-in bleachers above where there’s windows. There’s a crack between the windows we hadn’t noticed before.”

Maintenance noticed in October at the crack was growing, and the district architect, Cordogan, Clark and Associates, recommended the district brace the walls.

One week later, Spencer said, the bolts in the braces were loose and the crack was still growing. It was then, around Halloween, that it was recommended they leave the building and have the kids learn elsewhere.

Spencer said maintenance knew it was a new crack because there wasn’t any gum, gum wrappers, sucker sticks or papers shoved in it. It was a clean crack with no dust.

There were more inspections after architects noticed the crack, and it was discovered that there were three different drop ceilings that were put in place above the gym.

“We can demolish, rebuild and renovate. We can demolish and rebuild on the current site, and we can build a new two-through-five building.”

—   Chris Spencer, Coal City Unit 1 superintendent

They made a 6-foot cut in the wall and discovered that there were areas of the rafters that had moved out between 2 and 5 inches from where the wall was, and the wood trusses were splitting and twisting.

Spencer said this discovery led to the district moving students to the elementary school, and that’s what led in to Wednesday’s town hall meeting.

Options for renovation and replacement

Spencer and District Business Director Jason Smith explained Coal City Unit 1’s financial situation, and the options it has for either renovating or replacing the building entirely.

The district has already taken two steps: It has shored up the walls and trusses and Unit 1 school board authorized architects to come up with estimates for solutions. Those estimates are rough at this point, and Spencer said more concrete estimates will be available within the next month or two.

The current estimates say that new construction will cost between $450 and $650 per square foot, while renovations would cost $300 and $500 per square foot.

Spencer said there were building improvement and replacement plans that had been deferred for other projects, and uncertainty with the Dresden Nuclear Plant played a role in what projects were prioritized. The Unit 1 school board had both a capacity study and a long range facilities plan created in January 2020.

The long-range facilities plan included plans for the site of a future school that would house grades two through five.

“We can demolish, rebuild and renovate,” Spencer said. “We can demolish and rebuild on the current site, and we can build a new two-through-five building.”

The first option Spencer shared was repairing the truss system and leave the future of the school to be decided after the next agreement is made with Constellation Energy.

Constellation’s Dresden Generating Station provides $520 million of the district’s estimated $959 million equalized assessed value, and Spencer said the money from Constellation covers over half the district’s bills.

If the district were to fix the trusses, students could be back in the school by the 2026-27 school year.

Another option, which would have the students back in the school within about 18 months, is demolishing the gym and renovating the rest of the school while removing hazards like lead and asbestos. This would involve renovating about 45,700 square feet and rebuilding 25,000 square feet.

The third option shared was demolishing the building to rebuild an 80,000-square-foot school in the same space, with an alternate to that plan being to build enough space for second and third grade students and selling the current elementary school. It’s estimated that this would add 50 years of service to the building.

The fourth option shared would be to build a brand new building for grades two-through-five, which would be a 80,000 square foot. Spencer said the district already owns the land for this south of the high school, but that land currently does not have utilities run to it.

Spencer said these plans are conceptual, though, and there aren’t any design plans yet to share.

Spencer said the district has about $9 million left for capital projects from the current Dresden agreement, and renovations and rebatements would qualify for the use of health, life and safety funds and bonds. There is the possibility of a future referendum to get a bond for new construction.

Smith shared that the district does have a claim out with its insurance company, but there’s a dispute as to whether the trusses failing was due to the storm or due to wear and tear, since the building is 108 years old.

“My argument, essentially, was that the money they’re giving us to do that keeps the building from failing further, which will be a much larger insurance claim,” Smith said. “Those costs are the only thing we can get underwriting to cover for us, but that abatement is a cost of about $250,000 that insurance will pay.”

Smith also explained that more money could be coming in from the GE Hitachi property, the only spent nuclear waste storage facility in the world. Coal City Unit 1 has an appeal through the board to increase the facility’s EAV from $6 million to about $219 million, though Smith said the idea is really to get GE Hitachi to the negotiating table.

There will be a second town hall meeting at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 22 at the Coal City Performing Arts Center, 655 W. Division St. Those attending are asked to enter through the events entry door on the west side of the building.