Groff Elementary slowly takes shape
A pair of construction site workers wait on steel beams to be sent over as construction continues at the Vicki Groff Elementary School site in Moses Lake on Tuesday.
Casey McCarthy/Columbia Basin Herald
A view of the ongoing construction at the site of the new Vicki Groff Elementary School in Moses Lake.
Bricks are laid in place on Tuesday as construction continues on the new Vicki Groff Elementary School in Moses Lake.
Construction crew secure steel beams in place as the frame of the new Vicki Groff Elementary School continues to take shape in Moses Lake on Tuesday.
Beams go up at the construction site of the new Vicki Groff Elementary School in Moses Lake on Tuesday afternoon.
MOSES LAKE — The concrete foundation, steel girders and blocks going up not far from the intersection of state Route 17 and Nelson Road are beginning to look like something.
Like a building. Like Vicki Groff Elementary School. Which, if all goes well, is set to open its doors to students in the fall of 2021.
“We’re on schedule,” said Bill Frazell, construction superintendent for Fowler General Construction, which is overseeing construction of the new school. “We’ve finished phase one, and brought all the utilities to the site, and now we’re on phase two, which is the building.”
“For this portion, we’ve been going vertical for about two weeks,” Frazell said.
Ground was broken on Groff Elementary School, the district’s 11th, in mid-June. The $27 million school, designed for an enrollment of roughly 500 students, is one of the projects authorized as part of the school construction bond approved by voters in February 2017.
Frazell said work crews have been connecting steel beams and laying cinder blocks for about two weeks, and they intend to pour the concrete floors for the building’s second story and mezzanine in the next few weeks.
“We plan on continuing to work through the cold,” he said.
In fact, a temporary plastic wall is going up around the frame of the school’s main building in order to provide some protection from the cold as well as to allow crews to keep the concrete warm so it can cure properly.
“It has to be warm,” Frazell said.
Groff Elementary is unique in that it utilizes a standard design intended to fit in any of the Moses Lake School District’s existing elementary school sites with a minimum of alteration. A 12th elementary school is authorized under the 2017 bond measure, and Moses Lake School Board approved Groff Elementary’s overall design with the intention of using it to replace some of the district’s older elementary schools, many of which were built in the 1950s.
The school is named for Vicki Groff, who served on the Moses Lake School Board for 30 years before deciding not to run for re-election in November 2019.
Charles H. Featherstone can be reached via email at cfeatherstone@columbiabasinherald.com.
