BOARD AWARDS HIGH SCHOOL CONTRACT

The Cape Girardeau Board of Education voted Tuesday to hire Wm. B. Ittner Inc. of St. Louis to plan, design and manage construction of a high school.

Board members elected to allow Ittner to manage the entire project rather than hire a program or construction manager to oversee construction of the school on land west of Kingshighway and Southern Expressway.

"This is a traditional architect and general-contractor project," said Superintendent Dr. Dan Steska. "We feel if we get a good contractor who does a quality job and has a good track record, this is a money-savings option for the district."

The district will forward a letter of intent to Ittner this week so the company can begin preparing a presentation for a Vision 2000 public forum at 7 p.m. Jan. 20 at Blanchard Elementary School. The forum is being held to gain public input on the design of the high school and to gain support for an $18 million, no-tax-increase bond issue voters will be asked to approve to finance the project.

Steska said the school board likely will place the bond issue on the April 4 ballot so the district can continue to meet the goals listed in a master plan created five years ago. A four-sevenths majority is needed for passage of the measure.

Ittner representatives will attend a Jan. 24 school board meeting and enter a formal contract with the district. Steska said the final contract is fairly complex but will not allow the district to spend more than $25 million that school board members previously identified as the maximum allowable without a tax increase.

"We have been very clear with the architectural firms we've talked with that $25 million is the maximum budget, because we're committed to staying within the pledge we made to the community in the master plan," Steska said. "We have done a lot of research locally and throughout the Midwest and are fairly confident that that's about what it's going to cost for a school the size we need."

Prior to the election, Ittner representatives will continue developing a budget and preliminary design for bond issue purposes and will attend public meetings to assist school officials in answering questions about the bond issue. Should the bond issue fail, "we owe them nothing," said Steska.

However, he said, if voters approve the bond issue, Ittner would receive 5.9 percent of "their estimate of what the construction would cost at that point" or the actual contract amount, whichever is less.

Ittner, which only builds educational buildings, has completed more than 50 high schools in the nation since 1899, with five new high schools completed in the past six years. Locally, the company has worked on a variety of projects in the Cape Girardeau School District, including design of Central High School in 1951 and Lorimier School (now City Hall), as well as additions to Washington Elementary, Franklin Elementary, West Broadway Elementary (now Medical Arts Building) and May Greene Elementary.

The company also is designing the polytechnic building and Sikeston Area Higher Education Center for Southeast Missouri State University.