The Wright City R-II Board of Education recently approved a change order for the construction of a metal building that will house locker rooms at the football field on a temporary basis at the new high school, which is currently under construction. 

The board voted 7-0 to approve a change order to add a pre-engineered metal building at the football field, which will incur a cost of over $647,000. The change order also includes a deduction of over $106,000 to eliminate a storage building at the football field. The total cost for the change order is $541,000. 

Prior to the approval, the project cost for the high school construction was about $6,000 under budget. The funds for the change order to construct the building for the locker rooms will come out of the donation the district received from American Foods Group. The district received a $2 million donation from AFG earlier this year. 

The metal building will house two locker rooms, two restrooms and a storage space. 

The district initially had plans for locker rooms that would serve the teams that use the football field in their initial plans under the alternate bid for a performance gymnasium, Wright City R-II Superintendent Dr. Chris Berger said. The district could not afford to award all three alternates and the performance gymnasium was dropped from this phase of the project. Alternates for the football facilities and softball and baseball field were approved. 

“That left us without our performance gym,” Berger said, “Which we had a backup plan to use our current gym. But the unfortunate part of that was part of that alternate two was the two locker rooms that would serve the football field. The activities of the football field. We had a backup plan for that too, which was the auxiliary gym locker rooms. It’s not ideal, but we knew that could work.”

After the bids were awarded, the district announced American Foods Group donated $2 million for the project. The donation is to be used for athletic facility improvements. Part of the cost will go towards American Foods Group signage, but Berger estimates the district will have around $1.8 million to use on athletic facility improvements. 

After the district was notified of the donation, they tasked Bond Architects to come up with a solution for locker rooms for the football facility. Bond Architects Project Manager Erik Wilson noted the initial plan was to use the storm shelter locker rooms for activities on the football field if they did not get the performance gymnasium alternate approved. 

“As we’ve been talking through them, some things that came up were do we really want to use those facilities,” Wilson said. “We’re tracking kids in with cleats and stuff into the P.E. locker rooms and they have to go through a gym to do that. There’s some security things that we always look at from the design side.”

At that point, they looked at expanding the storage building in the plans and using it for locker rooms. They expanded the building from 800 square feet to 2,800 square feet to house the home locker room, visitor’s locker room and needed storage. Each locker room will have one restroom. 

“This is by all means, hopefully just temporary,” Wilson said. “So in a few years, the gymnasium is built and we will have the full locker rooms. And then the visitor locker room could remain if the school district wants it to and they could say visitors always go here and the home locker room could then be additional storage for all the sports teams equipment and such. So, it's kind of a multi-purpose building.”

Berger said the temporary solution will enhance the immediate future of their facilities for the district. 

“Eventually, when we have the performance gym and the two additional locker rooms, it’s always great if you can get your visiting team moving in a different direction than your home team,” Berger said. “That’s always ideal… Certainly it will enhance the immediate future and what we need for lockers for the home team too.” 

Berger said the district should be “safely at $1 million dollars” of remaining funds from American Foods Group’s donation after factoring in this project for other athletic facility improvements in the future.