From the Ground Up: Fordland High School gymnasium and community room

Owner: Fordland R-III School District
General contractor: Nabholz Construction Corp.
Architect: ACI/Boland Inc. (Kansas City)
Engineers: Toth and Associates Inc., civil and structural, and RTM Engineering Consultants LLC, mechanical, electrical and plumbing
Size: 26,551 square feet
Cost: $8.5 million
Funding source: Bond and levy funds and a Missouri State Emergency Management Agency grant
Estimated completion: November
Project description: A landlocked school property required some creative thinking for expansion, according to retiring Fordland Superintendent Chris Ford. That’s how the site of a onetime sewage lagoon ended up as the location of a two-level gymnasium now under construction for the district’s combination high and middle school. Ford said the high school was built in 1973 but wasn’t tied into the city sewer system until the 1980s. The result is a gym with a lower level of 19,397 square feet built into the recessed ground of the dry lagoon with a planned upper-level seating area of 3,639 square feet above the locker rooms. Attached is a Federal Emergency Management Agency-approved safe room of 3,515 square feet. The project is funded by voter-approved bonds, passed in 2015 and 2020, as part of the district’s Operation Eagle Pride long-range plan, adopted in 2014.