SEQUIM — The Sequim Community School is one step closer to receiving its long-awaited face lift.
About 50 students, Sequim School District officials, school board and community members gathered Friday for a “capital project levy groundbreaking” ceremony at the Sequim Community School, as the district moves forward with building a new central kitchen and demolishing the unused portions of the school built in 1949.
“This is a historic moment for us as we plan for our present and future,” Superintendent Gary Neal said at the ceremony.
The school has been vacant and unusable for the last six years after it was deemed unsafe for students in 2012.
Sequim Schools Superintendent Gary Neal, right, joined by School Board President Heather Short, left, Vanir Construction Management Inc., northwest area development manager Bernie O’Donnell and project director Tobi Maggi, stand before an audience of about 50 people at the Sequim Community School at a groundbreaking ceremony last Friday. (Erin Hawkins/Olympic Peninsula News Group)
Clallam County voters approved the district’s capital projects levy in 2017 that will generate $5.75 million over three years (2018-21) to fund a new kitchen and demolish the rest of the school. That allowed the district to apply for $4.1 million in state matching funds.
The district’s central kitchen will remain in use until the new one is ready to operate, which district officials say should be up and running by the resumption of classes in the fall.
Neal commended the Vanir Construction Management team for the work its done on the Community School and the kitchen so far.
“They have over-delivered and become a part of our community,” Neal said.
Sequim Schools Superintendent Gary Neal, right, with student board representative Tea Gauthun and Helen Haller kindergartner Emma Bixby, left, commemorate “a historic moment” for the district as it celebrates a new central kitchen that will be installed in the northwest corner of the Community School tentatively by the start of the next school year. (Erin Hawkins/Olympic Peninsula News Group)
Bernie O’Donnell, Vanir’s northwest area development manager, said the new kitchen will be state of the art and a “good use” of state matching funds by opening up more square footage for the district to claim in the future.
The kitchen is in its design phase of the project and Vanir officials said most of the construction will be focused on the west wing of the school where the new kitchen will be built and abatement of the rest of the building will follow, tentatively in November.
Olympic Peninsula Academy, which operates in the remaining usable portions of the Sequim Community School and houses about 100 students, will be relocated during the demolition process.
Neal said OPA will stay put for the remainder of the 2017-18 school year, but that the district is in the process of purchasing portables from Port Townsend School District to house OPA in the future.
Students, faculty and Vanir Construction Management Inc. representatives listen as Sequim School District officials talk about moving forward with capital project goals at the groundbreaking ceremony last Friday. (Erin Hawkins/Olympic Peninsula News Group)
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