The committee met with Tom Schermerhorn from Excel Engineering on November 16th and November 30th.
At the Nov. 16th meeting, Excel was not yet prepared to answer whether the project would meet parking requirements and other city ordinances. During the second meeting on Nov. 30th, Excel told us that we *do* have enough parking, and that they talked to the city and the city did not see any red flags with our preliminary plans (this includes having the parsonage garage open out to 9th street). Of course, we will not get final determination from the city until we submit final plans.
The School Expansion Committee will present preliminary school expansion plans, as they currently look, to the congregation at the Open Forum on Dec. 11th, and invite all church and school members to give their input on these plans at that time.
To summarize the meetings:
Excel presented two preliminary layouts at the Nov. 16th meeting.
Both layouts include:
4 new rooms (classrooms and wrap-around-care room), built off the east side of school
Bathrooms on both the upper and lower floors of the new addition
A 5’ x 5’ elevator in the new addition
A passageway from the new school addition’s lower level to the church basement
At the Nov. 16th meeting, the committee had the following thoughts:
We will need more storage than what the preliminary layouts showed.
Discussed various configurations and destinations for any passageway that would go into the church building.
Determined the proposed commons will be roughly the same size as the church’s Fellowship Hall.
Having a covered drop-off for church was not addressed yet.
With the proposed layout, the existing 2nd grade classroom would lose its windows, so this room would probably be used as a storage area (which is also needed) or an “aide” room.
We discussed adding on to the north side of gym instead:
If we put classrooms north of the gym, that will break up the school too much and Mr. Wilson wants there to be more continuity/interaction between pre-school, kindergarten, and grade school.
We could instead opt to extend the gym farther to the north and use some of the existing south part of the gym to build classrooms; however, Excel determined this option would be too expensive.
We discussed the parsonage garage. It seems likely that with the current preliminary plans the only option is to reverse the garage entrance and have the driveway go out to 9th street, meaning the parsonage’s driveway would go through its existing backyard.
Between our Nov. 16th & Nov. 30th meetings with Excel, Tom Schermerhorn did due diligence with the city of Manitowoc to determine what ordinances we would need to be aware of as we contemplate a school expansion. He also modified the preliminary plans based on our comments.
During Excel’s second visit with our committee on Nov. 30th:
Tom Schermerhorn came with new drawings that addressed many of our concerns from the first meeting.
Excel determined there should be room for 7 parking spaces in the parking area between school and church, above the hill. This is similar to what we have now.
Excel determined that the ceilings of the new commons in the addition would be 8 feet high, which is the same as the church’s fellowship hall.
There was discussion as to whether there were enough stalls in the boys and girls bathrooms in the new addition, especially the lower level restrooms close to the gym, which would be used during sporting events, etc.
When asked about cost, Tom from Excel gave some ballpark numbers: $3,250,000 for the whole project, which includes about 400K for the new passageway and 250K for the revised covered dropoff near the main church entrance.
The School Expansion Committee decided to meet one more time before the Open Forum and Voters Meeting on Dec. 11th, without the architect, to go over various layout options and prepare a presentation for the Open Forum, so we can solicit input from the congregation before having the architect spend any more time on changes to the drawings. The committee will therefore meet on Thursday, Dec. 8th.