New Building To Join Manassas School System (ICYMI)

Image: Moseley Architects

The post was originally published on May 13, 2015.

By Chris Gaudet (Patch Staff)

The Manassas City Public Schools (MCPS) will expand with the construction of a new building for Baldwin Elementary/Intermediate School.

The city’s School Board voted unanimously Tuesday night to approve the construction of the new school building, awarding the $32.4 million contract to Scheibel Construction, based in Huntington, Md.

“It’s a project we can afford, that meets the educational needs of the city and that must be built now,” said Arthur Bushnell, the chairman of the School Board’s Finance Committee, in an MCPS statement.

The new three-story, 140,000-square-foot building is part of the School Board’s plan to handle growing enrollment in Manassas. The school will serve about 1,000 students.

But the board and city school system must decide when the new school will open. A presentation document released by MCPS (link is below) lays out two potential construction timelines - pne for opening the new school in September 2016, the other in January 2017.

The MCPS staff is working with Scheibel Construction to finalize a timeline for the project.

Designed by Moseley Architects, the new facility will house Baldwin Elementary’s pre-kindergarten through fourth grade classes and Baldwin Intermediate School, grades five through six, according to the MCPS statement. The “school within a school” is designed with separate visible main entrances for each school and features flexible “extended learning” centers on each floor on both sides.

The new facility will be built at 9000 Tudor Lane, the current site of Osbourn High School’s baseball and softball complex and the former site of the MCPS Central Office. Baldwin Elementary School’s current building is at 9705 Main St., next to the high school.

Plans call for the current Baldwin Elementary to be demolished when the new school opens. It will be replaced by a new baseball/softball complex for Osbourn.

Additional information about the new school can be found here in the March 3 presentation to the School Board.

The community is invited to hear more about the project at 10 a.m. Saturday, March 21, during the ‘Saturday with the Superintendent” program at Jennie Dean Elementary School, 9601 Prince William St.