Friday, September 13, 2024
AZLE — Residents of Parkwood Court, Azle Oaks Apartments and surrounding areas may have to get used to the sights and sounds of construction for the next two years. At the end of July, the plan to build a replacement Azle Junior High entered phase one of building.
The replacement junior high was approved by voters during a 2023 bond election and was seen as necessary by the district because of its growing student population, current space limitations, and the advanced age of the original building.
During the last Azle ISD board of trustees meeting, school board members voted to approve a guaranteed maximum price of $9,996,543 for the first stretch of construction. Mike Trammel and Joel Martin of BTC, which specializes in school construction, were introduced by Assistant Superintendent Matt Adams to answer questions and lay out the company’s plan going forward.
Phase I will include constructing proper drainage areas, earthworks, retaining walls and the necessary fencing for future construction. The retaining walls will be of the same style created for Hilltop Elementary last year.
Board secretary Sarah Bennett asked Trammel and Martin about the intensity of lights that will be used over the course of construction. While saying some concrete work needs to be done at night, the BTC representatives said they will keep the disturbance to a minimum, using only small security lights for the most part.
Superintendent Todd Smith noted that for much of construction, BTC will occupy the baseball field at AJH rendering it unusable for several seasons. Trammel and Martin explained that because of space limits with the current AJH campus, drainage areas and driveways, BTC did not have a better alternative. BTC said a new drive will be in place by next summer. Classes at the current AJH building will begin as scheduled Wednesday and will continue concurrently with construction.
The new Azle Junior High School will consist of three stories and, when completed, the new building will accommodate 1,200 sixth through eighth graders. The school will be built in steps of increasing height, comparable to a wedding cake, but because of the drastic differences in elevation throughout the campus, it will appear as if it is only one story from the north side when complete.
BTC will return to the board in September to pitch a guaranteed maximum price for Phase II of construction. All new facilities are expected to be online and ready for the school year by August 2026. Removal of the existing junior high building will be in the last phase of construction.
“There’s a lot of moving parts of this project,” Trammel said. “It's a very difficult project but we do this all the time. We spend a lot of time and effort planning and thinking about how we're going to do it. I think we've got a pretty good plan in place.”
