RIPON – The Colony Oak Elementary School reconstruction project is looking at an aggressive timeline.
Khushroo Gheyara of Program Management Integration provided some of the key steps necessary for the K-8 campus to be reopened by August 2017.
At Monday’s Ripon Unified school board, the school planner indicated that the Colony Oak scheduling will be similar to Weston Elementary School. The work of the first half of the Measure G project was completed July 2015.
The voter-approved bond measure made possible $10.4 million on the reconstruction of Weston, with developer fees taking care of the additional $175,000.
Plans call for Colony Oak to be remodeled as a Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics campus or STEM at an estimated $11 million.
WLC Architects did the conceptual drawings not too long ago, getting input from folks at Colony Oaks on the design.
“There have been a half dozen meetings (at Colony Oak) including one last week,” said Gheyara, who added that CT Brayton & Sons of Escalon is serving as the preconstruction consultant.
Trustees, for their part, selected a geotech consultant (Terracon of Lodi) and began the lease / leaseback process.
In the next two to three months, Ripon Unified will look to find a lease / leaseback contractor by April 11 along with conducting an environmental review, preparing construction drawings, and having the board review the construction document.
The RUSD aggressive timeline could depend on the Division of State Architect providing the final OKs to the plan.
Gheyara is keeping his fingers crossed that the DSA check comments will take place in July and the final approval by August.
Construction, if all goes accordingly, could begin this September.
Gheyara is still uncertain on some of the infrastructure, asking, “will it be getting a hook-up to the City’s (water) utility lines or well water (at Colony Oak)?”
He vowed to provide updates to the board on the key steps and possibly have a Plan B in place, just in case.

View the article here…