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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Bowdish Jr. High Ready For Remodel

Movers and salvage workers picked Bowdish Junior High School clean this week.

A veritable city of boxes traveled in several directions: blue labels to North Pines Junior High, red to Opportunity Elementary and boxes upon boxes of textbooks bearing orange labels that read: Needs Repair.

“Welcome to Cardboard Box City,” said acting Bowdish principal Bob Johnson.

The move makes way for $7.8 million worth of renovation at the school, which will start later this month. The construction will update wiring, heating and plumbing and redesign and reorganize classrooms for maximum flexibility. Work is due to be completed in time for the start of school in September of 1998.

Nearly everything else that was moveable, from a 55-tray pizza rack in the school’s kitchen to an upright Yamaha piano, was bound for storage central, the Central Valley School District warehouse.

Not that every detail was seamless.

“Where do my boxes go? Don’t move my boxes; I don’t know where I’m going,” muttered Michael Muzatko, music/drama teacher.

But the district maintenance crew was busy pulling fixtures from Bowdish that will fill the wish list of other schools.

Restroom mirrors went. Ditto the best of the toilet stall partitions. The ice machine in the kitchen was bound for North Pines. Time clocks and exhaust fans went. Thermostats and other controls were fair game for Ron Wolfe, who looked forward to having immediate spares for those winter days when a school’s heating system cops out at 6 a.m.

Fluorescent lights were on the wish list for the Barker Center, said Tim Byus, head of the maintenance department. Replacing Barker’s incandescent lighting will save money for the district. Also on Barker’s list were white boards, cork boards, cork stripping, roller shades.

“They would like to have anything that normal schools have,” Byus said.

Among the most sought after items in a move like this, Byus said, are teacher’s cabinets.

“Those are at a premium. Everybody wants them. But the outgoing principals guard ‘em with their life. It’s kind of fun.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: BOWDISH BID AWARDED Walker Construction will handle the remodeling of Bowdish Junior High, the Central Valley School Board decided on Monday. Walker won the contract with a bid of $5,463,000. School officials will mark the onset of the renovation on Friday with an 11 a.m. ceremony. Officials will remove the lettering at the entrance of Bowdish, as a symbolic gesture at the start of the $7.8 million project. The lettering will eventually be replaced somewhere in the renovated building, said Skip Bonuccelli, Central Valley spokesman. Other major costs in the project include more than $500,000 for design, $460,000 for sales tax, as well as thousands of dollars for consultant work, change orders, equipment and supplies. This week the district also awarded a $67,000 bid for asbestos removal on the building.

This sidebar appeared with the story: BOWDISH BID AWARDED Walker Construction will handle the remodeling of Bowdish Junior High, the Central Valley School Board decided on Monday. Walker won the contract with a bid of $5,463,000. School officials will mark the onset of the renovation on Friday with an 11 a.m. ceremony. Officials will remove the lettering at the entrance of Bowdish, as a symbolic gesture at the start of the $7.8 million project. The lettering will eventually be replaced somewhere in the renovated building, said Skip Bonuccelli, Central Valley spokesman. Other major costs in the project include more than $500,000 for design, $460,000 for sales tax, as well as thousands of dollars for consultant work, change orders, equipment and supplies. This week the district also awarded a $67,000 bid for asbestos removal on the building.