Mt. Pleasant CSD chooses CANCO for master plan
2 years, 9 months ago
MOUNT PLEASANT, Iowa — The Board of Education of the Mount Pleasant Community School District has voted to award a contract for facility needs assessment and master planning to a team led by Carl A. Nelson & Company.
Meeting on June 14, 2021, the board voted unanimously to award the contract to CANCO and its design partner, West Des Moines, Iowa-based SVPA Architects.
Although a number of concerns already have been identified by the district (inadequate bus barn; leased central office; agriculture program space; elementary school facilities in Mount Pleasant and Salem), the process being engaged in is not focused on one grade level or another, or on attendance centers only. The status of all the district's facilities will be taken into account before a set of priorities can be determined.
The needs assessment will include site visits; reviews of blueprints and other pertinent documents such as fire marshal's reports and roof inspection records; evaluation of enrollment trends and community demographics; identification of deficiencies; assessment of site conditions, code compliance and existing infrastructure and meetings with a range of stakeholders. Findings will result in a final facility assessment report that will be presented to district administration and the Board of Education.
With that report as a foundation, the master planning process will include additional input from stakeholders in the community and among district staff; and identification of funding options. A list of opportunities for building additions and renovations, along with other possible improvements, will be compiled, reviewed and prioritized into a set of options for future building projects. Preliminary project phasing and budgets also will be produced, along with 5-year and 10-year plans.
The process concludes with a long-range plan being presented to the Board of Education for consideration of next steps.
Since 2009, CANCO has provided needs assessment and master planning, pre-bond planning and construction management services to school districts across Iowa. This experience includes needs assessment and master planning that most recently has led to construction management projects now underway in both the Washington and Keokuk school districts, and will lead to upcoming bond votes in those and several other districts.