Gulf Shores Will Unveil Details of $131 Million School Bid Tonight
John Mullen • February 5, 2024
New Plans For Gulf Shores High School
Gulf Shores Superintendent Matt Akin will present a bid for buildings for the new Gulf Shores to the city council during a special session on Feb. 5. The special meeting will be right after the council work session.
His recommendation is to award the construction bid to Rabren Construction for $131 million to build the new school.
“The new Gulf Shores High School will be a cutting-edge facility totaling 287,000 square feet designed to educate over 1,000 students, and master planned to be able to nearly double in capacity to accommodate growth for years to come,” a memo to the council states. “Inside, students will learn in a mixture of collaborative spaces, including classrooms that can be scaled to accommodate class sizes from 20 to 200. Students will be immersed in hands-on learning and leading-edge technology in various engineering, biomedical, marine biology, culinary, and finance labs, maker spaces, art, music production, and broadcast studios.”
Band, choral and drama students will have spaces in a new “state-of-the-art” performing center to be used for school and community events.
A new athletic center is also part of the plan and will include two competition-size gyms, locker rooms for all varsity and junior varsity sports, meeting rooms, training rooms, and coaches’ offices.
“An additional 18,000-square-foot field house complete with an athletic performance center planned to be connected to a covered 100-yard practice pavilion that will provide year-round training opportunities for all Dolphin athletes,” the memo states.
The initial bid came in at about $133 million but city and school staffers worked over a 60-day period “value engineering” to find a way to pare down the costs, eventually trimming $3 million off the total price.
Once the new school is opened, the school board plans to renovate the elementary and middle schools for use by PreK-5th grades and the current high school will undergo renovations and house 6th-8th grades.
At the elementary school campus, two new buildings have been added since the city separated from the county in 2019, including STEAM collaborative learning center and an eight-classroom addition. The board also did extensive renovations to two existing buildings on the elementary campus.
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