Published: April 30, 2008 04:49 pm            

Athletic facility needs drastic cuts

The Zionsville Community Schools Board didn’t provide any solutions at its Monday, April 28, work session about the proposed athletic facility, but it did get a much clearer picture of its task — cut $10 million from an estimated $27 million facility.

The board approved a bond in 2005 of about $17 million for the facility. However, it decided to hold off on building the facility because construction costs began to rise, and it also wanted to wait until after a decision was made about the expansion of the high school.

Using the initial plans, ZCS Superintendent Scott Robison said the athletic facility would now cost about $27 million. The school system has the option to not build the athletic facility, in which case the tax rate would not be affected by the bond. In effect, ZCS bond counsel Thomas Peterson said, it would be exactly as if the board had never borrowed the money.

The bond would stay in an investment account and earn the same amount of interest from the investments that the bond pays out in interest, Peterson said.

Robison estimated that the facility would include about $2 million in soft costs, which are things like fees for architects and construction managers and insurance. That leaves about $15 million for hard construction costs.

The initial 124-acre athletic facility at the corner of County Road 400 South and County Road 875 East included a multi-use 6,000-seat stadium, five soccer fields, two baseball fields, two softball fields, a tennis complex and several support buildings.

All the new plans presented by project architect Bill Payne moved that multi-use stadium to the high school’s Mulberry Street campus. Robison estimated this move would save roughly $1 million.

School board member Rob Wingerter said he approved moving the facility to the Mulberry Street campus, and no other school board member spoke against that option.

Robison solicited cost estimates for each part of the athletic facility as initially planned from three construction cost estimators and averaged each of them.

Following are the approximate costs of each of the different parts of the athletic facility.

• Multi-use stadium — $10,551,145

• Baseball and softball fields, locker rooms, concessions and ticket building — $4,593,797

• Tennis courts — $1,717,392

• Soccer fields — $991,151

• Infrastructure and utility — $7,088,485

Robison said as different parts of the facility are excluded the infrastructure and utility amount would also decrease.

Board President Jim Krupowicz said he wanted to a priority list for the facilities from the school administration before anything moved forward.

Robison said it is important to move quickly on this project because the longer the board waits the higher construction costs become.

“The money is less beneficial to us everyday we wait,” he said.

        

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