Anticipation high for school
Published 12:12 pm Tuesday, June 26, 2007
LYNNWOOD – Jason Hall, 12, wandered and wondered: “This is going to be a school? Wow.”
Jason, who just finished up at Cedar Valley Elementary School, was walking in the dirt and among the stumps of a recently logged 40 acres off North Road in Lynnwood last week.
It doesn’t look like much now, but in the fall of 2009, when Jason is a freshman, the site will be a new Lynnwood High School campus.
In coming weeks, a small village of contractors’ trailers will be assembled. Dirt will be moved, utilities installed and concrete poured.
By fall, steel framing should start protruding from the ground. Construction will cost $68.2, about two-thirds of the total $99.8 million project cost, said Ed Peters, capital facilities director for the Edmonds School District.
The district hosted a groundbreaking ceremony on the high school site last week, complete with the Lynnwood High School pep band.
Seeing so many people there reminded Peters of how much it takes to build a new school, from voters campaigning for bonds to architects drawing up plans.
Several youngsters just finishing elementary schools were on hand.
“One of the best parts of my job is I get to stand in the door on the first day and watch the kids walking into their new school,” Peters said. “That made it all that more real to me.”
“It’s going to be a heck of a school,” said Teresa Hall, Jason’s mom. “They waited a lot of years for the bond and it finally passed.”
Hall, a 1979 Lynnwood High graduate, likes her old campus, but she believes it has served its purpose.
“A lot of people passed through there,” she said. “It will be a shame to see it go, but it’s for the better. The ground is sinking there. It’s definitely done its job.”
The school, which will be built for 1,600 students, is scheduled to open in fall 2009. The school district awarded a $68.2 million contract in May to Cornerstone General Contractors Inc. of Redmond to build the school.
The 40-acre site is one mile east of the existing Lynnwood High School, near Floral Hills Cemetery on the east side of I-5.
The campus will include one large two-story building with steel framing and a combination of siding that includes masonry and metal panels.
Some of the timber from the logged-off site will be used for benches, trim and interior paneling in the new school.
“I can honestly say it is the first and only time in my life I have been happy to see trees go down,” said Madeline Herzog, who helped lead the 2006 campaign to pass the $140 million bond measure. “They have planned such a beautiful site with the building and the grounds.”
Herzog, a 1979 Lynnwood High School alum, had two good reasons – daughter, Meagan, and son, Jacob – for wanting to see a new high school.
Meagan will be a junior and Jacob a freshman when it opens.
The district’s other large high schools are in beautiful buildings and Lynnwood High “carries this baggage of being the building that has a pump in the library” because of an aquifer beneath it, Madeline Herzog said.
It is one of at least three pumps used to prevent flooding from rising groundwater on the Lynnwood High School campus.
Jacob Herzog, 12, explored the logged-off grounds last week knowing that the new campus should be ready by the time he finishes middle school.
“It’s going to be cool,” he said. “It’s going to be better than the old school.”
Reporter Eric Stevick: 425-339-3446 or stevick@heraldnet.com.
