BOARD INTERVIEWS ARCHITECT

The Cape Girardeau Board of Education will decide whether to hire an architect and construction manager for a planned high school during a special meeting Tuesday.

The board will meet at 1 p.m. Tuesday at the Board of Education office, 61 N. Clark. Members will make final decisions regarding proposals from four groups offering architectural, program management or construction management services for the high school, which would be built adjacent to the vocational career center being built near Interstate 55.

Voter approval of a no-tax increase, $18 million bond issue is necessary to cover the costs of the project.

The decision to meet was made Saturday after the board received a presentation from Wm. B. Ittner Inc. representatives. The company hopes to win a contract with the district to design the 1,300-capacity high school to house ninth through 12th grades.

The design would be similar to that of the newly-built Triad High School in Troy, Ill., which also was designed by Ittner.

"Once we decide the architect and construction manager situation, he or she could go ahead and begin the background work for the design," said Superintendent Dan Steska.

Board members met in a preannounced closed session with Ittner representatives for better than an hour, citing the competitive bidding clause of the Missouri open meetings law.

Board of Education president Ferrell Ervin said the meeting was closed to allow Ittner representatives to discuss what their fees would be if hired, and how those fees would change based on the district's decision to hire a construction manager and if the Triad school design is used.

Prior to the closed session, Ittner representatives said their base rate for architectural design was 6 and one-half percent.

Schools superintendent Steska said the closed session also protected Ittner in case the school board opts not to contract with the company.

"The decision was based on the need to discuss architectural fees in a private setting," he said. "If we decide not to go with Ittner, we didn't feel it was fair to Ittner to reveal their fee structure prior to our making our decision."

The Ittner presentation included a slide show and three-dimensional video display of Triad and other high schools they had recently designed. Representatives also used Ittner's one-of-a-kind I/PLANNER software to demonstrate how the district's current and future enrollment, course offerings and space requirements would affect the size and dimensions of the proposed high school.

"You have to make sure you have a program that meets your needs for your budget," said Dennis Young of Ittner. "Our final responsibility is to make sure it functions, it's economical, and it looks like you want it to."

Young said the software adjusts automatically when data is changed so that school officials and others can immediately see the impact of "what ifs."

No specific prices were quoted during the meeting, although Young said Ittner could do the project for $25 million. For that price, Young said he included nearly everything school officials had asked for including classroom space, wiring for technology, television studio, a performance track and field, and a 500-seat auditorium.

The price also included a 5 percent contingency amount and about $800,000 for furnishings and equipment.

"I wanted to come here and say I put everything in you asked for," he said. "On every project I've ever done, you have too much in there on the first run, and then you have to start making decisions."

Ittner designs 150 to 200 educational buildings throughout the nation each year. It is responsible for a number of new construction or renovation projects in Cape Girardeau School District since 1926 when West End School, now Cape Girardeau City Hall, was built. Ittner also built Central High School in 1951, and has designed several building additions or alterations at May Greene, Franklin and Washington schools over the years.

Currently, Ittner is working with Southeast Missouri State University on its Polytechnic Institute and Sikeston Area Higher Education Center.

"We're familiar with the area. We know the construction community and we know construction prices," said Don House. "We are the only educational architects in the U.S. that have actually worked into three centuries."