They’ll start with the floors. Mt. Airy’s Town Council decided on Wednesday that the floors will be the next step in getting the historic schoolhouse on Dicks Hill Parkway back into public use. “This week we hope to put out the call for proposals for leveling the flooring,” Mayor Gary Morris explained after a two hour meeting inside the shell of the 1921 structure. It is a small step in a giant project.
In addition to leveling the floors, the building needs a new electrical system, heating and air conditioning, new doors, insulation, a ramp for the front porch, some new interior walls to create offices for Town Hall staff and new plumbing to handle the new, more intensive, uses planned at the site.
“Just what we’re talking about is going to be in the $100,000 range,” Mayor Morris says. “That’s not counting the upstairs and a lot of the furniture and interior stuff that we’re going to have to do.” The town can’t afford to do all of the work all at once so leaders are approaching the project one step at a time.
Work on the floors could begin as early as June if the town’s Request for Proposals (RFP) goes up on the Mt. Airy website this week. State law requires that it be listed on the site for at least 4 weeks before the proposals can be reviewed. Once that work gets underway, they’ll move on to the next step. “The next phase will be the front porch,” Morris explains, “new steps and a new ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) ramp for accessibility.”
Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax (SPLOST) is paying for the project with $100,000 set aside in the last SPLOST and $200,000 set aside in the new SPLOST to help pay for schoolhouse renovations. Morris says he has no idea when they’ll actually be done but he’s hopeful they’ll be able to begin moving over from the current Town Hall before next spring. “We’re hoping within a year or so to be in here and then start on the upstairs and finish that out as a community room.”
You can find out more about each of the RFPs as they become available at the Mt. Airy Town Website.
