SMCISD considers new admin facility
The question of what to do for a San Marcos CISD central office remains up in the air after discussions at the SMCISD board of trustees’ most recent meeting.
“At our agenda prep, we went over the struggles we were facing with the central office and looked to the board for guidance,” SMCISD communications director Andrew Fernandez said in a presentation to the board last week.
Fernandez pointed out the constraints the district faces: Leasing a location, as the district has been doing since leaving the old central office on LBJ Drive, is not a tenable long-term solution, but the construction of a new central office must be within the budget of $4.5 million that the district has set aside. Moreover, a new central office facility should ultimately unite all the departments that are part of the central office.
Fernandez noted the costs associated with leasing space for the administration.
“Leasing a facility long term is not ideal,” he said. “We currently pay $12,000 per month in rent, with the cost of construction increasing as we wait.”
Many construction options the district has looked at present new constraints. The district cannot meet budget by buying a property and constructing a new facility, or by repurposing an existing facility (the district had previously considered renovating a portion of the Mendez Elementary campus to accommodate a central office).
At last week’s board meeting, Fernandez said the administration recommends spending $4.5 million to build a new central office on property already owned by the district at the corner of Hunter Road and Suttles. He pointed out that based on the price per square foot of construction, the district can’t afford more than 15,000 square feet.
“We downsized the square footage of central office, meaning no board room in this particular plan,” he said, “and it also wouldn’t bring special education or student data services to this building.”
However, he noted that the Hunter Road site would allow for future expansion by building out and/or by building up, and that the location would put the central office near Child Nutrition, Maintenance/Custodial, Transportation, Purchasing, Warehouse and Technology.
Fernandez mentioned that the district has looked at selling current property to help offset construction costs. However, the Mendez Elementary site could serve students in the future, and the old location of the central office on LBJ is problematic.
“The LBJ property has the most value, when we think about selling it,” he said, “but it requires the most additional infrastructure and has no room for expansion.”
Trustees asked if it might be possible to talk in more detail about options and costs.
“Maybe we could look at tacking a central office workshop onto an agenda prep meeting,” trustee John McGlothlin suggested. “... I personally would like to see what value we could find per square foot that might allow a larger facility.”
Fernandez said that architects from Perkins and Will would be able to attend the agenda prep meeting on Feb. 11 and could have a basic design prepared by then.
Trustee Miguel Arredondo said he would like to explore options for variances from the city to save money and possibly expand the square footage. He specified the parts of the city’s development code that regulate the kinds of materials that can be used on a building’s exterior and said he would like to avoid having to use more costly materials “just so it looks ‘nice’ to our city officials.”
