Construction on new Career Academies facility to begin soon

Nov. 17—Construction of a new building on the Career Academies of Decatur's campus will start in a few weeks, according to Decatur City Schools Superintendent Michael Douglas.

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"We're hoping to start in November or December," Douglas said of the planned 27,900-square-foot, $8 million building on Westmead Street Southwest.

Shelton Cobb, the career and technical education supervisor at Career Academies, said the new building, next to Austin Junior High, will accommodate the academies' growing health science program.

"Our health science program is the largest in the school system," Cobb said. "We have around 800 students from grades 8 through 12 and we need more space to be able to offer (the program) to more students and be able to do more lab work."

Cobb said the new facility will provide students with opportunities for improved instruction. He expects construction to be complete in April 2023.

"For their clinical training, all health science students will go the hospital as they have been doing, but with this new building, we will be able to expand our lab work and work with high-fidelity simulators," Cobb said.

Cobb said the engineering program at Career Academies is increasing as well and the building will give students more space to work with 3D printers and composite materials.

The $8 million cost is being financed through a $1.25 billion statewide bond that was issued in October 2020.

Huntsville-based Consolidated Construction is supervising construction of the building. The same company oversaw construction of Decatur City Schools' new central office building on the corner of Fourth Avenue Southeast and Grant Street, which was completed last month.

In August, Douglas estimated construction of the new Career Academies building would not begin until April 2022 because former DCS project manager Lee Edminson said certain materials would not arrive until then.

"We were told by Lee before he left that if you started in the fall, it would be April until you got bar joists," Douglas said.

Bar joists are the steel structural components used to frame the floor and roof.

Cobb said the bar joists should arrive around May but they want to begin construction rather than wait on the joists to arrive.

"Once we get to that point, we'll have (bar joists) in place," Cobb said.

—wesley.tomlinson@decaturdaily.com or 256-340-2438.