- November 5, 2024
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The 25-year-old Flagler Auditorium has been awarded $500,000 in state grant money for a long-awaited renovation project.
"We are finally here before you," auditorium director Lisa McDevitt told the School Board during its Dec. 5 workshop. "We received the costs affiliated with the modifications and additions that are going to happen to the auditorium and determined that they are within the budgetary abilities of the auditorium governing board as well as the School Board."
The next step, she said, is to apply a restrictive covenant to the property — restricting its sale for 10 years — in compliance with the grant agreement.
The renovation will include the addition of office space, expansion and renovation of the restrooms, the replacement of the stage floor, theater lighting upgrades and other measures.
All of the construction and renovation would have to be completed by Oct. 31, 2018, with an option for a 60-day extension for extenuating circumstances.
The work must be completed in a series of phases before the grant will pay out the money for each consecutive phase, and the school district will have to put in money of its own: The total project cost is expected to be $1,496, 538, with the auditorium's governing board paying $400,000 and the grant covering $500,000, leaving the district paying $596,538.
Board member Andy Dance, noting the board's difficulty in getting contractors for the work, asked if the end date for the work would need to be extended. McDevitt said it already had: It had initially been June 2017.
"It is a very tight timeline. It truly is," she said. "But our hope was that we were going to get a contract signed so that we would actually be ahead of the game with respect to the contractor."
The district is negotiating with contractor General Mechanical Corp. and plans to meet with the contractor later this month.
