The Cheney School District plans to start work early next month on its two new middle schools, after recently opening bids for both projects.

One of the two schools will replace the current Cheney Middle School, which is located at 2716 N. Sixth, in Cheney. The low bidder for general contractor of that school is Lydig Construction Inc., of Spokane, with a bid of about $24.8 million. The new Cheney Middle School will be located north of the current school's site, and its new address will be 740 Betz Road, says Jeff McClure, the district's project manager for capital construction.

The other school, which has yet to be named, will be located at 6120 S. Abbott Road, near the district's Windsor Elementary School. The low bidder for that school is Garco Construction Inc., of Spokane, with a bid of about $26.4 million.

The district's superintendent, Larry Keller, says the school board was scheduled to approve both bids at its March 9 meeting, the day after the Journal went to press.

The planned new schools were designed by NAC|Architecture Inc., of Spokane, and are identical in layout.

Keller says the bid was higher on the Abbott school because it's on an unimproved site that requires new water lines and fields. The Betz site already has athletic fields, and a lot of the infrastructure is intact, he says.

He adds, however, that together, both bids came in about $2 million lower than what the district originally had budgeted.

"Construction costs are down, and I feel that we got great bids on our buildings," he says. "The bids on both sides were pretty tightly packaged as far as competitiveness."

Keller says most of the contractors who submitted bid packages on the Abbott school were within $100,000 of each other. The district chose to bid for the schools separately to create competitiveness and get the most out of the bids, he says.

The construction of the schools is being paid for through a $79 million bond levy that voters approved in early 2010.

The new schools will be able to accommodate up to 700 students each and are needed due to the student population growth that the district is experiencing.

Both schools are scheduled to be completed in time for the start of school in the fall of 2012.