Mead School District has awarded a roughly $12.8 million contract to Spokane-based Northwestern Construction of Washington Inc. to build a new elementary school on the Five Mile Prairie.


The 59,000-square-foot school, which will have a partial second story, will be located at 2606 W. Johannsen, just east of Five Mile Road, says John Dormaier, director of facilities and planning at the district. The building will include classrooms, a gymnasium, multipurpose room, music room, kitchen, library, and administrative offices, Dormaier says. Northwestern also will do some improvements to Johannsen Road as part of the project, he says.


Construction is expected to start early next month and to be completed by September 2007, he says. Northwest Architectural Co., of Spokane, designed the project, which will be the districts eighth elementary school. The district will decide on a name for the new school sometime next year, before the school opens for the 2007-2008 academic year, he says.


The new school will house students in kindergarten through sixth grade and will be able to accommodate up to 600 students, Dormaier says. The district needs another facility because enrollment at its other elementary schools has exceeded capacity, Dormaier says.


The district decided to build the new school on the Five Mile Prairie because a number of its students live in that rapidly growing area, he says. The new school will serve students primarily from the Five Mile Prairie, but the district also is changing some of its boundaries to send students there who live in other areas to relieve crowding at its other elementary schools.


Were trying to ease the crunch at our elementary schools, because theyre significantly squeezed for space right now, Dormaier says.


Southwest of the site for the new school, Northwestern Construction also is wrapping up renovation work on the school districts historic Five Mile Prairie School, at 8621 N. Five Mile, he says. Both the renovation project and the new elementary school are being funded through a $37.7 million bond measure the districts voters approved in 2004, he says. Those bond sale proceeds also are helping fund construction of a new middle school.