Rendering by McKee & Associates

New school project a go

By Leigh Anne Butler

Construction on a new high school is about to begin.

Dr. Brock Nolin, superintendent of Tallassee City Schools stated, “At the last board meeting the board approved the contract with Nearen Construction, a firm out of Cullman, Alabama that also has an Auburn office.  They have done quite a few facilities for Auburn University.  They have a good building contract and perspective so we are excited.”

“We’re looking at possibly mid to late November for construction to begin,” Nolin continued. “You might see a little bit of equipment rolling in to the campus in the next few week.”

A pre-construction meeting is slated for the week before Thanksgiving to discuss details of the project.  “Once we get in line with the building commission to have that meeting, we’ll be rocking and rolling,” Nolin stated.

“We will start on the east side of the campus with the auditorium where the band and choir facility will go.  We will build from the east to the west.  Tentatively we will still be in the old building until the end of school and around the first of May we will have modulars set up on the band field behind the high school.  We’ll have about 15 to 16 of those modulars and we’ll have about a month of overlap between our academic schedule ending and construction on that building starting.”

Nolin continued, “We have a tentative build schedule of finishing in August 2022 but being a bit of a pessimist and a realist it will probably be a little longer than that, but that’s okay because that has been a long time coming.  That building has been in service for 92 years.  My daughter who is a ninth grader is a fourth generation Cannon woman to walk those halls, so it’s time for a new facility.”

“I hope the building is an economic boom for our city.  I’m not a field of dreams kind of guy that believes if you build it they will come but I do anticipate growth with this project.  We have plans for an additional 12 to 14 classrooms in our academic building so if we experience exponential growth we have a plan in place to build those classrooms very cheap because all of the infrastructure will already be in place.”