A total of $1.37 million in construction and renovation contracts were awarded Monday night by the Oxford Board of Education and the good news is a majority of the contractors are located within a 25-mile radius of the community.
Contracts involve work on the new middle school athletic field, the new pre-kindergarten facility and the new central administration building.
All of the money being spent here is from the $32.735 million bond proposal approved by district voters in November 2009.
Bond money can only be used for capital improvements, property acquisition and the purchase of furnishings and equipment. It cannot be spent on school operations.
The board awarded a $407,700 general trades and concession building contract for the middle school athletic field to the Flint-based W.H. Hall & Sons, located 24 miles from Oxford.
According to Ben Schneider, senior project manager with the Lansing-based Granger Construction Company, the field is scheduled to be seeded in either September or October. After that, it must sit unused for an entire year, so as to allow the grass roots to grow and strengthen.
Officials awarded $407,900 in contracts to transform the district’s former central administration building on Pontiac St. into a facility that houses pre-kindergarten programs.
Winning bidders included CCI Construction from Hemlock, Michigan (62 miles away), Mills Mechanical in Ortonville (9 miles) and Stewart Electrical in Metamora (8 miles).
Work on the new pre-kindergarten facility is expected to start next week and move-in is scheduled for late August, according to Schneider.
The school board also awarded $554,499 in contracts to transform the downtown’s historic Meriam building (10 N. Washington St.) into the district’s new central administration building.
Using bond money, Oxford Schools recently purchased the Meriam building for $785,000.
Winning bidders included A. Rea Construction in Southfield (25 miles away), Shamrock Floorcovering in Ann Arbor (46 miles), Heights Heating & Cooling in Auburn Hills (12 miles) and Omega Electric in Farmington Hills (25 miles).
Work on the Meriam building is expected to begin next week. Late September is the targeted move-in time for administrators, Schneider said.
It was noted that the district is spending $687,582 less with its purchase and renovation of the Meriam building and conversion of the old central office into a pre-K facility than it would have paid out if the schools had gone through with their original plan to purchase the First Baptist Church of Oxford and convert it to a pre-K facility.
According to Granger Construction Company, to date, 86 percent of the bidders awarded school contracts are based within a 25-mile radius of Oxford.
In dollars, that amounts to $2.07 million of the $2.4 million in contracts that have been awarded thus far.