If you read the post about the Site Plan, you may have noticed that the increased parking will also include an additional exit to Graves St. That exit street will line up with Howell St, and today Graves was closed at that location as the crew made some improvements to drainage utilities.
Looks like the foundation work is back on track. Today we are drilling down 15+ feet for concrete piers, upon which they will lay a concrete foundation. More pictures to come this week…
Such was the comment from our administrator, speaking of the building project. If you followed the work, the crew dug down 8′ for the foundation, only to fill it back in again.
In staff meeting we were assured this is all part of the process to prepare for a good foundation. We are still making forward progress!
Half a million dollar’s worth of equipment is digging out over 60,000 ft2 of dirt. If you were buying that in bags at your local hardware store, that would be 30,000 bags of the standard 2 cu ft size. You can probably fit about 10 bags at a time in your SUV. That’s a lot of dirt.
Last week I saw the best picture and was without my camera. Two boys were watching these big toys in action; the kids must have been 4 and 2. In my mind I imagined their fascination at these “big toys” while they played with “little toys” at home. If you are the kind who still likes to check out the toys, you can check them out here and here.
A significant part of this build is more space for our Early Childhood classes.
The first floor of the expansion will add 10 classrooms for our preschool children. Two pairs of classrooms will be split by a movable wall that can open to create two larger (800 950 sq ft) rooms that can be utilized for special occasions, volunteer training, etc. This expansion will help immensely to accommodate our fastest-growing demographic – the preschool!
All this week we will be describing what final product will be. Today we are looking at the Family Theater.
This room will hold 400 parents and children, and will be used primarily for our Kids Bible Fellowship and KidStuf programs. As you can see from the floorplan, it will be a very functional space, and will include lots of storage and backstage accoutrements to aid in large group performances. The Family Theater will be on the 2nd floor of the Children’s Building Expansion. Our KidStuf crew can hardly wait to get out of the modified multipurpose room, and work in our first real theater environment!
If you took a look at the construction site on Sunday, you may have noticed they are moving dirt all over the place, not just at the South side of the Children’s Building. You may just be wondering what in the world we are building! This week, as the big machines continue to move earth, we will take a look at the plans for the site.
Here is a bird’s eye plan of the whole construction area. Existing building is in gray; the addition is in yellow; and new parking is in brown. Future fields (in green) are planned soon after the water restrictions are lifted. Up is East.
(click to enlarge)
Check in all this week for more pictures, including elevations and floorplans.
You can now get a visual of the footprint of the addition. The new construction will add 72′ to the end of the existing Children’s Building. At 124′ wide, it will encompass over 8500 square feet on each floor, for a total of over 17,000 ft2. This would be equivalent to about eight standard 2000 ft2 houses. It’s a big build!
…but we’re breaking ground today.
How is it that McKinney gets no rain for months, until excavation week? We should break ground more often.
Construction…one day you’ve got nothing but a grass field; the next you have stakes and tractors.
