Elementary 11 ready to break ground in Northside

Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools’ newest elementary school is taking its first major steps toward becoming a reality.

Elementary School 11 will be located in the Northside neighborhood and has been planned to help reduce district overcrowding.

The school is expected to cost about $20.6 million and will be finished May 2013 .

Construction is projected to last 15 months and cost about $21.5 million. Though no timeline has been finalized, project managers say building will begin within days.

More than 70 percent of the materials from the deconstructed structures were recycled, according to a report that the Orange County Board of Commissioners will review at their meeting Thursday.

Bill Mullin, executive director of school facilities for Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools, said before the building came down, Habitat for Humanity of Wake County removed windows, doors and mirrors for reuse in Habitat buildings.

Cindy Laws, corporate secretary for the company building the school, said the project is now at the site-work stage, which includes site grading.

Laws’ company, Durham-based Bordeaux Construction Company Inc., was hired in February. It has constructed schools including Sandy Ridge Elementary School in Durham in the past.

“We had about ten companies submit bids and they were the company that submitted the most reasonable bid,” Mullin said.

And after receiving a final permit necessary to begin construction — which project superintendent Matt McArthur said he will pick up today — it can start building for Elementary 11.

“Our notice to proceed was issued on March 15 and we have 443 days to complete,” he said.

He said the first and largest hurdle will be building a main wall to support the building.

“Once that wall is in place it will really cut us loose to do a whole lot of other work,” McArthur said.

He said the wall will probably be started within two weeks and finished in six.

District architects and administrators will oversee construction as the school moves toward completion.

They will approve payments and make additional changes as needed.

“We have an excellent facility staff who has between them decades of experience,” said Mia Day Burroughs, chairwoman of the Board of Education. “We are quite confident that they will handle it very well.”

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