Norwalk school board selects architect but land swap talks with county stall; board urges sale of more acreage

Norwalk City School District trustees on Monday announced the selection of an architectural firm and an owner’s representative for the district’s planned new campus, but said negotiations with Huron County over additional land have not yet yielded the acreage the board says the Ohio Facilities Construction Commission recommends.

A board member told the meeting the district had shortlisted three firms and that the district and OFCC ranked the same firm first; the board announced that the architect selected was the firm named in the presentation and that Westfield Consulting Group would serve as the district's owner’s representative.

The board said it currently owns about 20 acres at the proposed site and seeks at minimum 37 acres to meet OFCC guidance for staging, bus lanes, parent pickup, playgrounds and other campus needs. Board members described one county offer as a swap that would move the district’s 10 acres toward a wetter, less buildable portion of the parcel and add about 13 acres elsewhere, which the board said would still fall short and would require substantial stormwater work.

“Without having the footprint, the exact land that we need to do this project correctly going forward, we are not able to go out to bid for our construction manager at risk,” a board member said. The same board member said the district had received a county offer priced at $30,000 an acre for additional county acreage and that the only available appraisal on record values the land at about $11,000 an acre. The board member said trustees were willing to pay $30,000 per acre to secure the acreage the district needs.

Board members said the primary barrier has been a lack of direct negotiation: they said they have been invited to public and executive sessions but have not had a negotiating table with commissioners to agree a solution. The board appealed directly to the public to contact county commissioners, saying the project’s size — described in previous meetings as the largest public-construction project in city history — made the land deal urgent.

Officials said the district’s two recent procurement decisions (architect and owner’s representative) make it ready to select a construction manager once the acreage and final footprint are available. The board emphasized safety and traffic flow as design priorities and said OFCC recommended additional acreage so bus lanes, emergency access, parent pickup and playground spaces could be laid out without pushing traffic onto adjacent residential streets.

No final purchase or swap agreement was approved at the meeting. Board members said they have submitted counteroffers and remain open to solutions that secure sufficient acreage for the campus.