New Powell Middle School project moves forward

It will be a new middle school, but it will be familiar looking because youll have the old gym as a kind of an anchor on the one end of it, said Todd Wilder, coordinator of support services for Park County School District No. 1.

The school will be located on the same campus as the current building, and older sections eventually will be demolished once the new construction is finished. The gym is the only existing structure that will remain, and it will undergo significant renovations.

Encompassing roughly 58,000 square feet of new construction, work on the next phase may begin later this month. Groathouse Constructions bid of $16,359,446 was unanimously approved by the Park County School District No. 1 Board of Trustees on March 25. The Wyoming School Facilities Department signed the contract for the project this week.

The new building will feature separate classroom wings or houses for sixth, seventh and eighth grades, each with modern and unique colors and design aspects. Phase I, completed in 2012, will become the center of the school, with most of the new construction occurring on the east side.

With features like a sundial tower, art patio, indoor/outdoor Davinci science lab and outdoor amphitheater, the new school wont resemble any others in the district or even in the Big Horn Basin.

I am so excited about what this will add to the community, said Jason Sleep, the middle school principal. The aesthetic will be pretty amazing.

Wilder said that the school district is really proud of the new middle schools design.

We think its probably going to be one of the finest middle school facilities in the state when its done, Wilder said. We appreciate all the community involvement we had as we were going through the concept and design.

Powell school officials have known a new middle school project was on the horizon for the past decade, but it hinged on funding from the state, as well as the completion of the first phase.

In this 10-year story for the middle school, it became more complex than just a single building, Wilder said.

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New Powell Middle School project moves forward