Wilson Elementary School is gearing up for an $8.5 million addition and remodel of just under 22,000 square feet to begin this summer at 911 W. 25th, on Spokane’s South Hill.

The remodel and addition will include the replacement of two existing classrooms and the addition of six new classrooms, as well as a gym expansion to include a stage, and the complete upgrade of the kitchen.

The gym, which doubles as cafeteria space, will expand to about 4,500 square feet from its current footprint of 2,800 square feet, says Greg Forsyth, director of capital projects for the Spokane Public Schools district. It will have a stage installed to create a better venue for performances that will use gym seating, he says.

Two of the classrooms will be designated for science and music to replace space that had been repurposed to accommodate growth in student enrollment.

All of the classrooms were designed to comply with the lower classroom sizes set forth by the state, Forsyth says. The Washington Class Size Reduction initiative, passed in November 2014, limited class sizes in kindergarten through third grade to have no more than 15 to 17 students. In grades four through 12, each class is required to have no more than 22 to 25 students.

The school’s kitchen will be remodeled to comply with the scratch kitchen program implemented by Spokane Public Schools in 2016. Through that program, almost all foods are made in-house.  

Forsyth says the school has 35 to 40 employees, including temporary staff, and has about 365 students.

Construction is expected to begin in June and will take about 14 months to complete, Forsyth says.

Forsyth says the students will be relocated to the old Jefferson Elementary, at the corner of Grand Blvd. and 37th Avenue, during construction, the same location students were relocated to when the district remodeled both Hutton Elementary and Franklin Elementary. Those projects were completed in 2015 and earlier this year, respectively.

Garco Construction Inc., of Spokane, is the contractor on the project, which was designed by Integrus Architecture PS, also of Spokane.

Wilson Elementary was built in 1926, Forsyth says, and was nominated to the Spokane Historic Register in early 2019.

The school, designed by Loren L. Rand, originally had six classrooms, an auditorium, a health room, and a principal’s office. An east wing was built in 1941, adding five classrooms and a library. In 1961, a west wing was added which included a cafeteria-gym combination, a kitchen, and two more classrooms.

The east wing caught fire in 1973 and was replaced in the 1990s, Forsyth says.

The planned remodel and addition will replace the addition from the 1960s, which he says never matched the historic neoclassical-style tapestry brick façade of the original building.

The new addition will match the style of the existing building, he says. The school district worked with the Spokane City-County Historic Landmarks Commission during the planning phase to ensure the new structure complies with the parameters set by the historic register, he says.

Wilson Elementary currently serves kindergarten through sixth grade.

The Wilson Elementary remodel is among about $164 million in Spokane Public Schools construction projects in the works this year funded by the 2015 and 2018 bond measures.

Construction is underway on the $28 million Linwood Elementary School replacement, at 906 W. Weile. The 75,000-square-foot school is expected to be complete in August.

Work on the $23.5 million, 30,000-square-foot classroom and commons additions at Lewis and Clark High School, at 521 W. Fourth, is expected to begin in June as well. The project went out for bids in mid-March, and Garco Construction was selected for the project. The city of Spokane is currently reviewing the permits.

Other projects include the 135,000-square-foot Shaw Middle School replacement, which is expected to cost over $100 million and will include a new On Track Academy. It also will include a new Hillyard branch of the Spokane Public Library, which was funded through a library bond measure approved in 2018.