Construction at Aspen School District campus to begin Monday

About $5 million in repairs will take place at the Aspen School District this summer, using much of what is left of the 2020 voter-approved $114 million bond to address deferred maintenance.

Beginning Monday, June 10, maintenance on the elementary, middle, and high schools, and other district facilities like the field will commence. Construction will likely impact over 20 groups who use the campus in the summer, including the city of Aspen’s youth summer day camp and Theatre Aspen’s youth camps and productions, said ASD Director of Operations and Facilities Joe Waneka.

“I can’t wait to be able to pull this off,” Waneka said. “The teachers will be clamoring to get back to their classrooms to set it up, have a new carpet, fresh walls. That’s so exciting for them to be able to set up their new room and get back into the swing of our business of educating students.”

Select areas of the elementary and high schools will be closed on a rolling basis throughout the summer, but the entire middle school will be closed all summer for renovations.

The district will address an ADA compliance issue at the athletic field, a priority of the 2020 bond. Construction will begin on a ramp to the athletic field, fixing slopes on existing sidewalks, and a potential viewing platform above the field for people who use wheelchairs.

That construction will take place alongside significant repairs in the middle school, including floor replacements and repainting of nearly every hallway in the building. 

The elementary and high schools will also see floor replacements. Construction crews will replace fan coils and add pipes in the boiler systems at the elementary school, which haven’t been replaced in over 30 years, Waneka said. The upgrade will allow for more cooling in the elementary school (in place of air conditioners), and make future upgrades to a cooling system easier to accomplish.

“We’re kind of buying into the future here,” Waneka said.

Colorado law only requires schools to have heating systems, but with rising temperatures, the district might need to look into investing in air conditioning in the future, he said.

Skylights in the elementary and high schools will be replaced this summer, along with the roof at the high school. The district will do a partial replacement and restoration of the high school roof.

The roof is in good enough condition to not do a full replacement, Waneka said. The restoration will keep some of the old roof materials out of the Pitkin County Landfill and will give the roof another 25-year lifespan.

The district also worked with the city to reroute the Maroon Creek Trail to go around the campus for safety reasons, but while that construction is underway during the summer, the trail will still go through the district campus.

Waneka hopes each project will go as planned, but sometimes problems arise when you start digging, he said. Construction last summer revealed deteriorating sewage pipes at the high school, causing unpleasant smells in the science department and forcing crews to pivot to address the unexpected issue.

Floor replacement in the high school cafeteria will begin Monday, and Waneka is planning contingencies in case problems arise while ripping up the floors.

“They’re going to start flooring there on Monday, so therefore it’s going to set the tone,” he said. “If they rip into something they don’t like, we might have problems. I’m already working contingencies, we may not do the basement, we may not do the second floor, because it might take all summer just to barely get around on the main floor.”

“So I’m just strategizing because, until you start ripping it up, you don’t know what you’ve got under there,” he added.

The improvements at the district are some of the last projects of the 2020 bond, which the district must spend in full by 2025. Voters approved the measure that added about 50 units to the district’s employee housing stock, updated classrooms, and addressed significant deferred maintenance projects.

About $40 million of the 2020 bond went toward deferred maintenance projects. As of April, $107 million were committed to projects, according to a bond update presented to the ASD Board of Education in May.