Costs rise for renovating Rolesville Elementary School

The budget for renovating Rolesville Elementary School has increased 70 percent – or $8.1 million – during the past two years.

Rolesville’s renovations were originally budgeted for $11.6 million when the project was included in the $810 million school-construction bond referendum approved by voters in October 2013. But new figures presented to the Wake County school board this week now project the cost at $19.7 million, not including the bill for off-site road improvements that may be required by the town and state.

“It was a smaller-scale renovation when it started,” Joe Desormeaux, Wake’s assistant superintendent for facilities, said in an interview this week. “But when we got in there and started to look at it, there were additional needs identified.”

Wake has been dealing with rising construction costs during the past two years. Money that would have gone toward renovating Vandora Springs Elementary School in Garner and building a new elementary school in southwest Wake was transferred to cover other projects. The school system hopes to get money in the next building program to pay for Vandora and the new elementary school.

On Wednesday, the school board’s facilities committee reviewed the designs for renovating Vandora Springs and Rolesville elementary schools. The committee recommended that the full board approve both designs on Tuesday.

In addition to higher construction costs, the Rolesville project has also had changes such as the decision to drop a plan to keep the 50-year-old gym building. The gym is being demolished so that the new campus design will contain all the students in one building instead of having them walk outside to move between buildings.

The gym is being replaced with a multi-purpose room that can also be combined with the cafeteria to create a large assembly space.

Town officials had initially lobbied to save the gym but declined the school system’s offer to take over the aging facility.

This story was originally published October 15, 2015 at 5:11 PM with the headline "Costs rise for renovating Rolesville Elementary School."