The Alderson Elementary School project is beginning to take shape, with designs for the building shown off at a meeting of stakeholders on Thursday, November 20.
In addition to Thrasher Engineer’s staff, with point taken by Senior Designer Kenton Blackwood, the meeting involved members of the Greenbrier County Board of Education, some of the Alderson Community Center’s Board of Directors, Alderson Elementary School Principal Thomas Niswander, Alderson Mayor Travis Copenhaver, and Superintendent of School Jeff Bryant.
“I thought it was a very productive, positive meeting,” said Bryant. “The stakeholders from Alderson are very pleased and excited, as we are. It’s going to benefit the children and the town of Alderson. It’s going to be a true revival of the community center.”
“People need to understand [this is] preserving the heritage, preserving the past,” said Copenhaver. “No, it’s not a complete, brand new $20 million school. but I think it’s going to be exactly what we [need].”
Copenhaver (left) and Bryant (center) during the meeting. |
An addition, new entrance, new classrooms, and much more are planned for the current building. The plans are still in the works, but the meeting was met to iron out more specific details and provide the stakeholders an update.
One concern from the members of the Alderson Community Center Board of Directors was what would happen to the current building. When asked if the current entrance on Cedar Street would be changed, Blackwood explained that decision was not finalized, but was likely no.
“That’s been a big debate about what we are going to do out there. With what we’ve seen so far, … that was an incredibly well built building originally. It’s very sound. It doesn’t appear that there are any areas of magnitude that are going to require repointing of masonry, that sort of thing. … The plan is to get it cleaned on the outside, but the hope is for the most part for that stuff to be left as is. That’s the plan.”
The current Alderson Elementary School design – left is the new ground floor plant, lower right is the main floor plan where the gym is currently located, and top right is the upper floor plan. |
Walking into the Cedar Street entrance will lead into the current gym, where celebrations, community gathers, and even town halls are sometimes held. The current Alderson High School sign is planned to be restored and saved.
“I think it’s important for the community of Alderson – what you know as the old gym will become a multi-purpose room,” explained Bryant. “We’ll have tables there for the kids to eat lunch – those tables can easily be folded up and put into the storage area. You can either have basketball in the evening, or Fourth of July, whatever you want. The stage will remain there.”
However, an addition to the original high school building won’t survive the process.
“There’s a three-story addition that was added on at some point, I’m not sure exactly when, but it was certainly subsequent to the original construction. We tried to try to figure out how to, to accommodate that and to make that work as part of this new planning. And there was a cost benefit trade off. And it looks like the simplest way to accommodate that is we’re going to demo that addition. … You have three classrooms that are stacked, they have small extensions of the corridors in there, those are going to go away. We would have had to open up the end of the corridor anyway, for the additions because all those corridors tie in. That existing end to the building, … is going to be going away.”
Bryant (seated) watches the presentation. The currently building is show in the computer renderings as gray, with the new addition in color. |
The project would take the two current buildings of the Alderson Community Center and attach them with an addition. The entrance from the new building would lead directly into the four new pre-K and kindergarten classrooms, with restrooms located inside. Outside of this entrance is pre-K and kindergarten pick up and drop off parking.
From the visitor’s entrance, the hallway continues up a flight of stairs, where the current community center building’s mason-work wall will be exposed, the windows planned to display some of the memorabilia shown off currently at the Community Center.
“[With] that stone from the building and the exterior still there, that’s an absolutely wonderful idea,” Copenhaver said. “We want to think of it as a time capsule. … if you want to let us have that space. We’ll put we’ll put as much as we can into that space. … That’s kind of special. I really like that.
“We’ve walked through buildings, there were a number of old photographs and stuff that can be hung on the walls,” Blackwood said. “I’d love to see that whole [visitor’s entrance] area kind of dedicated to that sort of history.”
A 3D computer render of the visitor’s entrance. This wall is where the mason work on the outside of the currently Community Center will be located, the windows turned to display inlays. |
Copenhaver also asked “if there’s any way to preserve the stones that were laid by those volunteers from the old elementary school,” explaining that “those are the original stone from the elementary school building” and “that request has been made several times.”
Although a definite plan was not made, one suggestion for preserving the stones would be to place them in front of the new Alderson Elementary School sign on Cedar and Virginia streets.
Two playgrounds are planned for, one on the corner of Cedar and Lee streets and the other on the corner of Chestnut and Lee streets, with each having the capacity for approximately two classroom’s worth of children.
“You have a fenced in area for this playground and the one in fact, but we’re going to try to grade in this area here, a little steeper, right adjacent to the sidewalk, so that we can have as kind of as large of a generally flat area for the kids in that playground area. Right now. It’s trying to have a consistent slope across there, but we’re going to try to level that down ultimately, to get a flatter area. It won’t be perfectly flat because we have to have stormwater runoff.”
A rendering of the corner of Virginia Street and Chestnut Street. |
Even the bathrooms have new consideration, lacking doors into the restroom and instead using an open design. A number of sinks sit at the entrance of the restrooms, rather than inside, behind a door.
“This will be an opening into the restroom areas,” Blackwood explained. “On one side you’ll have girls, the other boys, and then the kind of the gang labs out here. We’ve done this in a number of counties, that way there aren’t doors [and] a teacher could stay right out here and be able to kind of hear what’s going on in there. … As the kids come out they wash their hands here [at the communal, unisex sinks]. This is one of the remedies [for] a lot of those kind of shenanigans of the days of old.”
Thrasher Senior Designer Kenton Blackwood and the building’s new parking plan. |
The timeline for construction has not changes much since the project was originally announced, but this depends entirely on the market forces controlling most building projects right now.
“If we look, … early in the new year to have ceremonial groundbreaking of some sort, we’ll be in a position then to … have some finished renderings of how this thing’s gonna look,” Blackwood explained. “I think we’re looking at 13 months total for the construction. We’ll have a little more information as we dial into detail there. There’s a lot of things happening in the construction industry right now, it’s a very volatile market [for both] prices and availability of materials. It changes really weekly, but the hope is that we’ll hit the bid with this and in a good swing period and be ready to go. I think early next year will bode well for all contractors lined up for for a … heavy building season.
“If everything went perfect, we talked about opening the fall of 23 or the second semester of 24, if everything goes [well],” Bryant said.
In addition to the commonly found construction issues hitting most Greenbrier County projects right now, Blackwood explained the additional time it would take to get the project started.
“[For] adaptive reuse projects, things come up,” Blackwood said. “That’s why we’re trying to do all the due diligence on the front side and make sure to check all those boxes. If we had a field where we were building the new building, it would be a much quicker process…. We all love these sort of projects, where it’s an integral part of the history and the pulse of a community, this is important. It’s very important that we do it right, and that takes a little bit more planning. We have to be very thoughtful, and careful with the design as it progresses and how we approach things. That’s why these sort of get-togethers are very valuable.”
The meeting ended with Copenhaver and Bryant discussing the last last hurdles to get through for the project to take off, with plans to get it finalized.
Bryant (seated) watches the presentation. The currently building is show in the computer renderings as gray, with the new addition in color. |
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