The Cleveland City School Board’s Site Committee met Wednesday to hear presentations from architect Brian Templeton of the Upland Design Group and Cleveland City Schools Director of Maintenance and Transportation Hal Taylor. Mr. Templeton laid out a tentative timeline for the new gym project, advising the site committee to move quickly with the preliminary steps, so that the demolition and construction can begin as soon as possible.
He said, “We want to get under contract as quick as we can so that there is time to for any new machinery or equipment to arrive. The next three weeks is where we need to focus our attention.”
As it stands, the plan presented by Mr. Templeton has demolition of the dome beginning on May 12, with completion of the total project slated for December of 2015.
Mr. Taylor presented the board with available options for dealing with the bleachers from the dome. Since the bleachers are still usable, they could all be sold, auctioned off, or stored for later use. Mr. Taylor said that a sports equipment company should remove the dome bleachers.
He said, “This is not something the maintenance department can do. If we want to sell them, we need to hire a company that specializes in this because it is a very technical process. We have a very popular (style of) bleacher and we have two schools already interested in them.”.
In the end, the site committee decided to recommend to the full board to use four rows of the Raider Dome bleachers to replace some older bleachers in the volleyball gym. The old volleyball bleachers would be scrapped, while the remaining dome bleacher would be dismantled and stored until they can be sold. Estimated cost of this is $28,600.