Parking lot moved to Phase I of Sullivan improvements

The Bonsall Union School District board voted 5-0 Jan. 9 to approve a change order to the Sullivan Middle School renovations which will move the improvements for the school’s lower parking lot from a future phase to the current phase of the project.

The added scope of work includes additional surveying, civil engineering and plan preparation for grading and drainage of the two parking lots, preparation of a storm water pollution prevention plan, and electrical engineering and plan preparation for parking lot lighting at the lower lot.

“We just figured that to reduce any of the traffic congestion we might as well get it done now,” said BUSD superintendent Justin Cunningham.

Once Bonsall’s new high school opens later this year on the Sullivan campus, students will be parking on campus. Cunningham expects that about 100 students will seek to park their vehicles in a student lot. The school currently has an upper parking lot with a decomposed granite surface for faculty parking and a lower parking lot with a grass and rock surface. “We’re going to blacktop all of that,” Cunningham said.

Even without the new high school students, the parking situation has created circulation problems. “It really backs up the roads,” Cunningham said. “We’re going to look at some different ways of directing the traffic.”

The district has a contract with Sprotte Watson Architecture for the conversion of Sullivan Middle School. The school district has adopted the New Technology Network model both for the high school and for Sullivan Middle School itself, and the interdisciplinary curriculum requires larger classrooms. The parking lot work was originally scheduled for a later phase of the conversion. The change order increases the Phase I cost by $22,850.

“We definitely want to have all this Phase I done by at least the end of the summer,” Cunningham said.