MARYSVILLE – The two-tone green building stretches longer than a football field and fills an industrial storage yard.
Sometime later this month, it will disappear from the 57-acre Whitley Evergreen Inc. grounds at Smokey Point.
In 121 parts, it will be rolled on truck beds along roads paralleling I-5 to a recently excavated spot on the Tulalip Indian Reservation. There, it will be reassembled by crane over two weeks.
And the Marysville School District will have its newest school.
Marysville Arts &Technology High School won’t be a conventional campus.
The custom-designed school was built in sections in a factory. Those 121 pieces will be joined together, somewhat similar to a Boeing 787 jetliner.
“It’s kind of like a jigsaw puzzle,” said Jon Krimm, general manager at Whitley Evergreen.
A 38,000-square-foot jigsaw bound by big bolts. Inside are enough single-story classrooms for 400 students and several common areas with 28-foot high ceilings and glass to bring in natural light.
Arts &Technology will be the first of three small schools to open on the site just south of Quil Ceda Elementary School in what will be called the Marysville Secondary Campus.
Tulalip Heritage High School and Tenth Street School, a middle school, are also being built in the Smokey Point factory, each with different designs.
“We wanted to give them their own identity,” said John Bingham, the district’s capital facilities director.
A gym and administration office will complete the $24 million campus. Money for the project comes from fees charged to developers for growth-related impacts on schools.
Building the school in pieces and moving it to the site costs less than building the school in a more traditional manner.
“They are not your grandfather’s portables,” Bingham said. “The building is very, very well built. People are going to have a hard time believing it is a portable building.”
Walt Hylback, who was raised in Marysville, is glad he got a chance to help build schools in his own community.
He’s the project manager for Whitley Evergreen, which is working for William Scotsman, the prime contractor hired by the Marysville School District.
William Scotsman will assemble the buildings and do the finishing work inside, such as laying carpet and hooking up utilities.
Arts &Technology High School will be trucked to the campus after concrete is poured for the building pad in the next two to three weeks.
Hylback is eager to see the school open.
“They could very well be my grandkids’ schools some day,” he said. “That’s quite a feeling.”
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