The County Commission on Wednesday approved a $30,690,000 bid for a new home for Chattanooga School for the Liberal Arts (CSLA) at the former Lakeside Elementary School campus by Highway 58.
The project will include renovating some 92,000 square feet at the current school and constructing a 50,000 square foot addition. county school facilities director Justin Witt said.
The low bid was from Tricon, Inc., of Cleveland, Tn.
Christman Company of Knoxville bid $31,077, and P&C Construction was at $31,850,000.
The addition will include a section for the middle school and high school, including a new gymnasium.
Mr.
Witt said, "We will get started immediately."
He said the renovation of the current building is slated to be finished by next summer (2022).
The addition is on schedule to be finished by Christmas break of 2022.
Funding will include $25 million left over from a county bond issue.
The remainder would come from energy savings as well as federal COVID stimulus funds.
School officials earlier said it would cost over $35 million to build a new school at the current site on East Brainerd Road.
An option discussed earlier of buying the Sears portion of Northgate Mall would have been around $33 million, including a $6.4 million acquisition cost from developer Bassam Issa.
Tucker McClendon, who heads the school board's facilities committee, earlier said the current aged school is "abysmal" and the schools need to take advantage of the current opportunity to get the students into a new and renovated building.
Justin Robertson, schools COO, earlier said there had been talk years earlier about building a new CSLA school that would cost over $60 million. He said that would have been a much larger school for many more students.
The school at Lakeside will move CSLA from the current K-8 to K-12, but it would be built for 1,000 students. It has some 500 K-8 students now.
Supt. Bryan Johnson earlier said the board needed to take some type of action, saying it could not keep hanging onto the bond money.
He said the move would take care of facility needs at both the old and new campus for CSLA and leave the 35-acre East Brainerd campus for possible use later for a new elementary in that growing section.
Lakeside Elementary students moved to a new Harrison Elementary.