LEWISTON – The Maine Board of Education has given final funding and design approval to the new $11.4 million Farwell Elementary School, allowing the Lewiston School Department to accept bids for the project in January and start construction in March.
The school will stand two stories and will be more than 53,000 square feet, according to Semple and Drane Architects, the Portland firm that designed the school. The new brick building will be set about 75 feet behind the current building so workers can start construction before the old building is demolished and so the school’s driveway will be big enough to separate cars from buses.
The new building will include four oversized classrooms for kindergarten, 13 regular classrooms and spaces for art, the gifted and talented program, special education and other programs. It will also have a multimedia room by the library and a stage set between the gym and cafeteria so audience members can be seated on either side. Parts of the building will be air conditioned.
The school will serve 425 students in kindergarten through grade six.
The current 50-year-old Farwell school is small, overcrowded and in need of major repairs. In 2002, the Maine Department of Education named it the 10th-neediest in Maine. The state agreed to help the city knock down the school and build a new one. It also agreed to pay for staff and students to go off-site until construction is finished.
The school system has leased a Sabattus Street building that, until recently, was used as the Holy Cross junior high school. Farwell staff and students will move in February and will stay there for a year and a half.
The current Farwell building will be razed this winter and construction will start in March. The new school is expected to open August 2007.
Comments are no longer available on this story