Designers propose addition to raise East Garner campus capacity to 1,450; CIP report shows cost pressures and site-driven variance

Wake County Public School System design staff presented early schematic plans for an East Garner campus expansion and a separate capital-construction review that examined cost trends and cross-district comparisons.

Schematic highlights: a presenter for the design team said the project will bring the existing modular capacity into a new brick-and-mortar addition that increases building capacity from 832 students (existing building without modulars) to 1,450. The plan includes a new north entrance adjacent to an expanded carpool lane and visitor parking, a relocated bus service entrance on East Garner Road, a 400-meter competition track, a regulation softball field, additional event parking, a standalone restroom building for the athletic complex, and protected breezeways (not fully conditioned) connecting buildings to improve student security and circulation. Alice Reese, senior site planner, and Shane Webster, senior building planner, walked the board through the site diagrams and interior program priorities.

Programmatic interior changes: the new one-story addition will house a larger auditorium and expanded dining to meet the needs of the larger student population; classrooms will include grade-level wings and updated science and collaborative learning spaces. Existing spaces will be renovated to accommodate relocated programs (for example, converting the old auditorium into CTE space and repurposing some classrooms for special-education needs). Designers emphasized life-safety upgrades (LED lighting, HVAC improvements, ceiling repairs) and minor corridor renovations in parts of the older building.

Schedule and next steps: the design team outlined a timeline that finishes design in summer 2027, bids construction in fall 2027, constructs from fall 2027 through spring 2030, and provides the new addition for student move-in in fall 2029, with remaining renovations and site work completed by spring 2030. Team members said visioning sessions with the community and ongoing meetings with special-education staff could produce minor schematic adjustments before final design.

CIP cost review and context: separate staff reviewed capital project budgets, explaining a roughly $95 million delta between original project budgets and final project costs across the CIP portfolio; they attributed most of the discrepancy to a small number of COVID/CO-impacted projects (three projects accounted for approximately $63 million of the delta). When CO-impacted outliers are excluded, the average variance across projects looked much smaller (~2.7%). Staff compared Wake County per-square-foot numbers with solicited figures from other North Carolina districts and Charlotte-Mecklenburg examples, noting that site complexity (grading, utilities, retaining walls), municipal development requirements and programmatic amenities (larger auditoriums, additional athletic facilities) materially affect per-square-foot comparisons.

Why it matters: the schematic project addresses capacity and site issues at a campus with existing modular classrooms; the CIP review highlighted that large, complex projects and atypical outliers can skew district-wide per-square-foot averages and that improved early due diligence, programming consistency and escalation assumptions are key to reducing future budget variance.

Board direction: members asked for continued engagement with special-education staff to confirm suite layout and proximity to other services, requested ongoing traffic/driveway coordination with municipal reviewers, and asked staff to bring lessons learned on site-related cost drivers to future CIP planning.

The committee did not vote on the schematic or CIP items at this meeting; designers will continue schematic development, municipal coordination and targeted stakeholder engagement.