Structural steel erection for a new gymnasium at Tigard High School is wrapping up as crews approach the end of a two-year, $66 million expansion and renovation project.

The school, constructed during the postwar building boom, has received some 18 remodels over the years. General contractor Pence Construction is carrying out the latest improvements, thanks to money from a $291.3 million bond approved by voters in 2016.

“This high school was built in the 1950s; that was its first iteration,” said Eric Nesse, Tigard-Tualatin School District‘s bond support administrator. “It’s really been a Frankenstein job with many additions. Our architect has a little historic card with all the different colors from all the different remodels.”

The project, designed by Bassetti Architects, is taking place in two phases; renovations and new construction are covering a total of approximately 153,000 square feet. In the first phase, workers expanded an existing classroom wing for business and career and technical education, built a new wing with administrative space and a large common area highlighted by a learning stair, installed new turf for athletic fields, and constructed new tennis courts.

In the second phase, now under way, crews are building a new auxiliary gym that will connect with the new common area and an expanded cafeteria.

“There will also be the courtyard,” Nesse said. “And there’s a little breezeway that will be locked with a fence across it to the old building that will create a secure area. Looking into the auxiliary gym area, this is actually sort of a pit. There’s a walkway all the way around the gym that’s kind of sunken like a pit, with the basketball court down below at a lower level.”

All of that is now evident as completion of construction is now in sight.

“We’re in phase two, but there are still some odds and ends to take care of from phase one,” Pence Construction project superintendent Kurt Schwabauer said. “They’ve been using (the new wing) all year and everyone seems to be pretty happy.”

While DSL Builders of Salem is finishing structural steel work for the gym, Fred Shearer & Sons of Beaverton is building walls as well as connecting new structures with existing ones.

“The ironworkers are out there, and now the framers are here from Fred Shearer and they do the interior and exterior framing,” Schwabauer said. “They’ve got a pretty big package; they’re doing the interior and exterior framing (and) they’re doing the drywall and the insulation and the weather barrier.”

Fred Shearer & Sons also is performing finish carpentry and installing custom wooden ceilings throughout much of the new space. Other major subcontractors on the job include Prairie Electric and Oregon Cascade Plumbing & Heating.

“Oregon Cascade has our plumbing and heating package,” Schwabauer said. “Their labor force does the wet side of things, and then they’ve hired Salem Heating to do the dry side.”

For now, crews are scrambling to get roofing into place and the new gym dried in as spring approaches. This summer will mark two years of work on the project.

“With final phase 2 delivery, building turnover (will be) in early August and the parking lot will be done at the end of the summer,” Schwabauer said.

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Evergreen Public Schools in Vancouver, Washington, is putting to work $695 million of bond money approved by voters in February 2018. Dozens of school buildings are being renovated or replaced; one of the first is Sifton Elementary School, in Northeast Vancouver.

General contractor Pence Construction is tackling the $38 million project to replace an existing school built in 1958. The new, two-story, 62,000-square-foot Sifton Elementary will be the first of multiple new schools produced from a prototype design by LSW Architects.

Construction crews broke ground in April. These days, large glulam structural members are being erected for the gymnasium and auditorium, and exterior and interior walls are being framed. Soon, other tradespeople will arrive on site to begin rough-in work, but right now framers are working to get the building roofed and dried in before weather becomes harsher.

Wood framing is being used for the new school.

“It was a judgment call that we made early on in the design process,” R&C Management Group senior project manager Dan Bodell said. “Two years ago, construction costs were going nuts. Now, it’s not the same month-to-month creep that was going on; it’s a little more like a three-percent-a-year kind of cost creep. But we had to think: What can we do in the bones of the building to save money? And that’s why we went to wood framing.”

Crews with Salem-based DSL Builders are framing interior walls away from the main building and using a crane to fly them into place.

“Everybody will do some level of pre-fabbing,” Bodell said. “But here it’s all being done on site. At PS 22 they’re framing them in place and standing them up – not building them 100 feet away and swinging them into place. It’s just about different styles.”

“PS 22” is a new school, not yet named, being built by general contractor Triplett Wellman Contractors on Northeast 162nd Avenue. Meanwhile, a replacement for the existing Image Elementary School is being built by Emerick Construction on Northeast 131st Avenue. All three project teams are expected to finish their work by summer 2020, in time for the facilities to open for the 2020-21 school year.

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Snyder Hall at Umpqua Community College near Roseburg is being replaced nearly two years after it was the scene of the deadliest shooting in Oregon history. But there will be no memorial in the new building.

A commemorative meditation garden was originally included in plans for the new Snyder Hall, now under construction, but the space was scrapped by a board of trustees subcommittee now looking at how best to memorialize victims of the massacre.

“The thought process there was that this was a building that was going to fall back into the essential functions of instruction for the campus,” said Jess Miller, UCC director of facilities and security and a subcommittee member. “Even though the new building is forever going to have that stigma with it, we really want to develop our memorial area unassociated with the building.”

Programming of the new Snyder Hall will be roughly the same as the previous, though the footprint will be different. It will be a 9,500-square-foot, single-story structure with five classrooms and eight offices and some common areas. The new Snyder Hall will include “defensible spaces” for security, but overall it’s intended to blend with campus aesthetics, Miller said. An exterior breezeway – where the gunman, Chris Harper-Mercer, stashed ammunition during the shooting – was lost in favor of an interior hallway and internal doors to the classrooms.

Harper-Mercer arrived at Snyder Hall around 10:30 a.m. on Oct. 1, 2015 and opened fire in the classroom used for his Introduction to Expository Writing course. In all, he murdered nine people and injured eight more before killing himself in a shootout with police.

The former Snyder Hall (built in 1969) was demolished and the site scraped clean 12 months later with no clear plan for how to replace it.

The board of trustees subcommittee is now considering several options for memorializing the victims, including a deck structure that overlooks the North Umpqua River at the back of campus, a memorial at the entryway to campus, and one at one of the area’s public parks.

The architect of the new Snyder Hall is Portland’s Mahlum Architects and the contractor is DSL Builders of Salem. The total project cost is $4.25 million, with $3.4 million dedicated to hard construction costs.

“This is my favorite building that we’ve put on campus since I’ve been here,” Miller said. “It will blend nicely with what we already have, but with a modern twist.”

The stonework and cedar siding will match surrounding buildings. One big difference is that the new building will feature a heavy asphalt composite roof, rather than a concrete roof like the old building.

Site work and the concrete floor are completed. Stick framing is under way and the builder expects to be dried-in by the time the wet season hits in October.

“There will be rains if we’re lucky,” UCC purchasing director Jules DeGiulio said, referring to the long dry spell gripping Douglas County and all of Oregon.

Completion is scheduled for March 9, 2018.

The original building was named in honor former UCC dean Ralph I. Snyder, and the subcommittee decided early against renaming the building. The group’s final plan was forwarded to the Oregon Legislature, which approved a request for $6 million to pay for the project.

UCC, the only public higher learning institution in Douglas County, is in the middle of a larger capital program to build and upgrade facilities around campus. Winemaking and nursing facilities have been completed in recent years, and an engineering building is scheduled to be constructed in the future.

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