The Enumclaw School District’s Board of Directors and new interim Superintendent Jill Burns have put ink to paper, approving a contract to begin designing a new Ten Trails elementary school.
The board unanimously approved the resolution to work with Tacoma-based John Korsmo Construction during its Jan. 20 meeting.
The construction of this elementary school has been a long time coming project after multiple attempts by the school district to fund it via traditional methods — a.k.a. taxpayers.
But after being rebuffed multiple times — when voters rejected a February 2023 bond to, in part, construct a new school in Black Diamond at historical levels; again when rejected a bond for a new Enumclaw elementary school in November 2023; and a third time when voters also turned down a “critical maintenance” levy during last year’s April special election — the district moved to finalize a deal with housing developer Oakpointe, who has been building out the new Black Diamond Ten Trails community.
ESD and Black Diamond have been exploring this option since the second bond failed to pass.
The deal between the district and a private developer is extremely unusual, as developers typically do not provide funds for public facilities in this fashion.
That said, Oakpointe has a vested interest in this project as well because Ten Trails growth has lagged due to myriad reasons — the lack of a promised elementary school being just one.
In short, the Enumclaw School District on Nov. 25 released its interest in a plot of Ten Trails land that, in the past, was expected to house a new high school.
However, as new student growth projections show that Enumclaw High will be adequate to handle incoming students for years to come, ESD decided to sell the land back to Oakpointe for $40 million in cash.
The developer is able to use this newly acquired land for residential purposes, but not for building any additional homes.
But since $40 million is not nearly enough to build an adequately large school, Oakpointe is also financing $25 million for the project, to be repaid via mitigation fees.
This means that no money from ESD’s general budget will be used to repay this loan.
Additionally, there’s a time limit for when the loan must be fully repaid — but if the time limit expires, Oakpointe will clear the district’s debt.
That’s a total of $65 million for construction of the school building.
A further $3 million will be provided for the construction of a new all-weather baseball field and one all-weather soccer field.
This also does not have to be repaid to the developer, but ESD and the city of Black Diamond will split field priority, with the school getting priority on weekdays and the city on weekends and all other days.
ESD will pay for operation and maintenance, but the cost will be shared by Black Diamond.
WHAT IS PROGRESSIVE-DESIGN BUILD?
The contract with John Korsmo Construction is a “Progressive Design Build” contract, as required by the state.
According to Revised Code of Washington (RCW) 47.20.780, ESD is required to contract with an entity for projects like building a school for design and construction in order to save time and avoid costly change orders.
