Tam Valley School Project Split Into Two Phases

The 's $3.7 million modernization project for Tam Valley Elementary School has been split into two phases, with the district board voting unanimously this week to delay part of the work until 2012.

The move was sparked by a large Marin County Public Works sidewalk project planned for this summer along Marin Ave., as well as some Pacific Gas & Electric work in the area. Those projects would complicate access and schedule, according to Tim Ryan, the district’s director of maintenance and operations

“There’s just a greater likelihood of success to do it in two summers,” Ryan said. “We want to under-promise and over-deliver, and the closer we got to doing this project, we saw that we were setting ourselves up for failure.”

The district will do the bulk of the work at Tam Valley this summer, including the installation of a new electrical service, fire alarms, bell and clock system, numerous windows, roofs, playground striping, new bicycle parking, a new teacher parking lot and painting the entire school. That work will require full access to the existing buildings and playground areas.

But as the project’s schedule drew closer, it became clear that building a new retaining wall along the hillside and revamping the school’s existing parking lot would not be possible within the two-month window for the work.

The board agreed with district consultant Pete Norgaard’s recommendation to move that work to summer 2012. That second phase will include the reconfiguration of the existing parking lot, including the drop off area, sidewalks, installation of underground utilities, retaining walls, and construction of the covered walkway and covered student pick up area.

The project’s second phase may not shut down the entire school campus, Ryan said.

The project’s schedule was further complicated by county’s $715,000 sidewalk installation project, which is expected to begin soon after the school year ends on June 9. The project, which is being funded by a federal Safe Routes to Schools grant, centers on the installation of sidewalks along eight blocks of Marin Avenue, from Bell Lane (where the school is located) to Green Glen Way.

The sidewalk project was delayed for the past two years as a result of the more stringent regulatory requirements that come with federal Safe Routes projects, according to Ernest Klock, the county’s principal civil engineer. The county will advertise for bids in March and a contractor will be chosen in May. It will wrap up in two months and will not impact the beginning of the 2011-2012 school year, Klock said.

“We’re finally almost to the finish line,” he said.

PG&E will also be doing work in the area this summer, as the location of utility company’s transmission line for the school is in the middle of where the new sidewalk ends at Bell Lane. The transmission line will be moved to the area where the school’s dumpster is located.

Tam Valley Principal Gail van Adelsberg sent out a notification to parents Thursday announcing the decision.

Kathy McLeod, a Tam Valley resident whose son attends Tam Valley Elementary, wasn’t pleased with the move.

“They promised they would have it all done this summer and that they didn’t want it to be delayed,” said. “It’s really upsetting.”

Tam Valley resident Jeff Shine said he was fine with the district’s decision.

“As long as they complete each phase in a timely fashion and they do it properly,” he said.

Shine said he was more concerned about the proposed sidewalk’s impact on the width of the already narrow Marin Ave., where he lives.

“It’s going to push street parking out several feet, and cars drive very fast up the street,” he said.

Norgaard’s firm, Van Pelt Construction Services, is overseeing the design and construction phases of all of the district’s modernization projects. Those projects stem from district voters’ approval in November 2009 of Measure C, a bond measure to pay for $59.8 million of work facilities upgrades throughout the district.

The Old Mill and Tam Valley projects have moved the quickest, and both projects are expected to go out to bid, possibly as a single bid, in March. The projects are expected to begin June 10, the day after school lets out for the summer.

In addition to breaking up the Tam Valley project into two phases, the board this week also approved the design of the , by far the largest of the modernization projects. The project, estimated to cost between $25 million and $30 million, will be that starts later in the late spring of 2012.