NEW: THE HANGAR TO BE BUILT THIS YEAR

JEREMY WALTNER  – PUBLISHER

After more than a year of starts, stops, changes and doubts, a capital outlay project that would see a new wrestling and multi-use facility called The Hangar built in the green space between the auxiliary gym and bus lane at Freeman Public Schools has gained approval.

Meeting in regular session Monday night, March 14, the Freeman Public School Board voted 4-0 to accept a base bid in the amount of $1,099,999 from Puetz Design+Build to engineer the project.

Board member Doug McCune, who is associated with the firm that submitted the low bid, abstained from the vote and the discussion that went along with it.

The bid from Puetz Design+Build was one of three submitted. The others came from WS Construction Management LLC, with a base bid of $1,187,500; and from Visions Construction Group, Inc., with a base bid in the amount of $1,219,000.

McCune said construction of the project is scheduled to start by summer and, if materials are available and everything else goes according to plan, The Hangar would be completed and ready for use by mid-December.

While the board accepted the base bid, it passed on three alternatives that would have added about $125,000 to the project. Alternate one would have included a precast brick exterior ($50,083), alternate two would have included a nicer finish to the concrete flooring ($64,000) and alternate three would have included performance bonds ($7,876) that protect against the project not being completed.

This is the second time The Hangar project has been bid and follows the discouraging bid opening last December in which two were submitted — one in the amount of $1.55 million and the other for $1.68 million. Since the district had been working with an estimate of $1.2 million and a cap of $1.3 million, the board rejected both of those bids, but agreed to continue to pursue the project.

That led to a reduction in the design that amounted to about 1,400 square feet and the loss of both a storage room and rooms for officials that included plumbing — a higher-dollar component. As a result, no bathrooms will be included in the project.

The decision not to pursue the brickwork that bid alternate one would have included means The Hangar won’t have the same look as the rest of the building, but Superintendent Jake Tietje said it will still tie in nicely because the exterior will be made out of the same material used on the top third of the auxiliary gym.

This is the third major addition to the school building that first opened as the junior-senior high school in 1975. A gymnasium was built in 1992 and the elementary wing and auxiliary gym opened in 2009.

History

The latest project goes back to February of 2021 when head wrestling coach asked the board to consider building a wrestling room.

“We’ve never had a place to call our own,” he said. “We want the same type of equity of other sports in the school. It’s time to take a serious look at this.”

And school officials did, going so far as to hire CO-OP Architecture last spring to put together a plan for a 4,458 square-foot facility. But the board backed off after McCune, an incoming board member at the time who works in design-build management, expressed concern over the proposal because it lacked full specifications and inspections from an architect. He also expressed concern about the 7% fee for oversight of the project when industry standard was 6%.

As a result, on a strong recommendation from McCune, in July the board hired JLG Architects to design the new facility at a rate of 6.5% of total construction costs, which led to the rejected bids in December and, ultimately, approval of the project.

While The Hangar will be home to the Marion/Freeman Rebels and include enough floor space for the equivalent of a one-and-a-half mats (as much as 60×42 feet), it is also being tagged as a “multi-use facility.”

Sayler told The Courier on Tuesday he’s just happy that the board ultimately saw the value of the project and moved forward in support of the long-standing wrestling cooperative.

“After a year and one month we got it done,” he said. “I’m glad everyone was on board with this and agreed to spend the money.”