As buses pulled out of the Rundlett parking lot, the air around the school smelled like freshly tilled soil.
Excavators arrived at South Street at the start of the week, with crews preparing the ground for the foundation of a new school. As claws scraped at mounds of earth, dump trucks from Merrill construction and pickup trucks from Harvey circulated in and out of an entrance in the metal fencing that now surrounds the work zone.
The hulking machinery began to reveal forgotten treasures buried beneath the surface. Time capsules from the Concord High School graduating class of 1995 were located and unearthed in the schoolyard. They join other capsules from the class of 1989 dug up earlier this year and will be opened by students and alumni later this week.
At this early stage in the construction process, with bids in, estimated building costs are about $5 million lower than expected.
On top of that, reviews of the school designs yielded more chances to tweak the details and make them cheaper, led by the Concord School District’s building committee and approved by its school board. The changes focused on smaller items like using polished concrete instead of tile in some places and eliminating a walkway canopy. They are expected to shave another $1.4 million off the price tag.
Cashman expects a foundation to be dug and poured around the end of the summer.
The district solicited ideas from the public for naming the new school over the winter, but the naming process hasn’t progressed.
The board approved what was then slated as a $155 million school in the fall, but that number is based on estimates. A guaranteed maximum price will be formalized in the fall. This is on top of the more than $13 million the district has paid for the design.
