CRAWFORD COUNTY, Ga.—The new Crawford County Middle and High School construction is ahead of schedule, with general contractor Parrish Construction Group hitting the halfway mark in June. Parrish is working on the construction management of the project jointly with Southern A&E.

The new school, which will combine the middle and high schools under one roof, will host children in grades 6 through 12—with the school divided among the two along a central axis. According to WMGT, the school’s total enrollment when completed will be under 1,000. The last time the district had any school construction was around the turn of the millennium.

And according to WMAZ, the $33 million project is being undertaken to replace an older school building, which had been in existence since the 1970s. The new facility, which will feature a two-story gymnasium, is being targeted for completion next summer.

In addition to the gymnasium, the new school will offer state-of-the-art technology in the classrooms. Covid-related delays at the construction site were kept to a reasonable minimum, WMAZ reported.

High school students will move into the new building in early 2022, according to WMAZ, at which point the existing high school will be razed and turned into a parking lot.

The entire project is due to be completed by August of next year, WMGT reported.

Parrish Construction Group has offices in both Atlanta and Perry, Georgia. Southern A&E is based in Austell, Ga.

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The new facility will be located on the Evanston campus and will serve as a home for the Kellogg MBA program and the Department of Economics (within the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences). Both are currently located in the Jacobs Center, which Gordon I. Segal, chair of the trustees’ Educational Properties Committee, said at the new facility’s ground breaking was not up to standards.

The selected site, northeast of the Kellogg Allen Center, gives the new building spectacular views of the campus, Lake Michigan and the Chicago skyline. Toronto-based KPMB Architects designed the building to incorporate these views using several floor-to-ceiling windows on each level to create a sort of atrium space flooded with natural light.

Designed to facilitate flexibility and collaboration, the building also reflects the university’s interdisciplinary approach to teaching and researching business in the 21st century, Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences Dean Sarah Mangelsdorf said at the ground breaking. The planning team even made visits to the headquarters of companies such as Google and Pixar to learn more about creating spaces that support collaborative learning and innovation. San Francisco-based Strategy&, a consulting firm formerly known as Booz & Company, helped in the early conceptualization process.

“Weinberg College’s department of economics faculty and students will benefit enormously from the continued collaboration with Kellogg,” Mangelsdorf said in a statement. “This building will house some of the most exciting work being done in economic theory and development, and will foster a culture of analysis and innovation, critical thought and creative expression for a new generation of leaders in the business and economics communities.”

The new building will include classrooms, flexible learning environments, faculty and administrative offices, community gathering spaces and food service. It will serve as a flexible, multi-faceted space that can be easily reconfigured so that lecture-style classrooms can become large seminar rooms and offices can become study spaces. The building’s two-story, 6,600-square-foot conservatory stands out as a destination for business and civic leaders from around the globe. The space will be able to accommodate 250 people for dinners or 350 people for speeches and presentations.

“This building is going to send a big message about the future of education, especially with schools of management,” said Bruce Kuwabara, founding partner of KPMB Architects, at the ground breaking. “You don’t want to be just another business school. You want to breach the paradigm, and that’s what Kellogg has done.”

The facility is designed to achieve at least LEED Silver. The university worked closely with KPMB and German energy consultant Transolar to design a building envelope that will reduce energy consumption by more than 45 percent versus a typical building. Perhaps the building’s biggest sustainable element is a geothermal system consisting of 70 wells drilled almost 600 feet into the bedrock that will provide as much as 60 percent of the heating and cooling for the building.

Other energy-efficient features include LED lighting, lighting automation, light-harvesting using automated shades, triple-glazed windows and radiant cooling using chilled beams. Low-flow water fixtures will also be used throughout the building, and a 2,000-gallon cistern will capture rainwater for irrigation. Water runoff will be reduced through permeable paving and bioswales, which protect the local ecosystem through trapping and filtering pollutants before entering the watershed.

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The project is partially a response to the university’s Framework Plan, adopted in 2009, which called for improved recreational and athletic facilities on the main campus. The plan also called for a general shift, moving parking facilities to the edges of campus, and replacing it with green space when possible. The new parking structure will help to replace two parking lots near the middle of campus, which are currently being replaced by two acres of green space.

A new 2,500-seat indoor multipurpose facility will be used for hosting major events, like the school’s annual new student convocation, as well as competitive athletic events and team practices. The space will also be usable for club sports and intramural teams. The building will feature new locker rooms, fitness and weight training facilities, office and meeting room space, and sports medicine amenities.

Renovations to the aquatics center and sports pavilion will provide new practice and competition venues for varsity sports, new locker rooms, a new diving well next to the existing swimming pool, and spaces for yoga and various exercise classes.

A 1,200-car parking garage will take the place of an existing surface parking lot near the sports and aquatics center. This structure will also contain fitness studios, weight rooms, and other recreational facilities.

“This new plan will provide greatly enhanced recreational facilities for all of our students, increased parking at the north end of campus and improved key areas for our athletic programs,” said Northwestern University president Morton Schapiro. “This will be a benefit to many members of the Northwestern community.”

Schapiro added that the felt trustees embraced the plans because the new facilities would be designed to be useful for many purposes, creating benefits for the average student, not just varsity athletes competing at the highest level. He also said the timetable for construction would be determined by funding, stressing that this project would be “a number one priority” in terms of fundraising efforts at the university in the immediate future.

The project will return the football program to the main campus, with game day being the only time players travel to the university’s football stadium at Ryan Field. Practices and training sessions are currently held at a field near the stadium, which is approximately one mile away from campus.

Jim Phillips, Northwestern’s director of athletics and recreation, felt the new facilities would aid the recruiting process and bring athletes closer to the rest of the student culture at the university. “The improvements will provide better integration of our student athletes with other students on our main campus, reducing the divide that manifests when there are separate facilities for student athletes, as occurs at many other institutions.”

Northwestern’s football program has risen out of relative anonymity in recent years to attend four bowl games in a seven-year stretch. The team began its first sports marketing campaign in 2010, branding itself as “Chicago’s Big-10Team,” added Under Armour as a sponsor in 2011 and has begun this season with a bang, jumping out to a 3-0 record and becoming one of only 31 teams who remain undefeated at this point in the season.

“Football is the engine that drives this department,” Phillips said. “It’s the emotional engine. It’s the financial engine. We have to invest not only in all our sports, but especially in football. This will allow the football program to be in the heart of campus.”

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