It’s full speed ahead for construction of the new Skwo:wech Elementary School as the project makes up for time lost to COVID delays.
“We’re seeing a lot of progress over the last month, which is encouraging,” said Dave Crowe, the New Westminster school district’s director of facilities. “It’s always very, very exciting to start to see this thing come together and become a school that we’ll all be proud of.”
Crowe, speaking at the school board’s Feb. 8 operations committee meeting, said the construction project is finally past all the delays related to COVID-19 supply chain issues.
Now the school’s exterior cladding is virtually finished, and the long-awaited exterior door hinges have been installed. This past weekend, the project team did a “significant concrete pour” and installed sidewalks and curbs on the site.
City inspection and approval of the new building is now expected to take place in early March.
The new school is being built behind the existing one on Richmond Street.
The school district had originally anticipated having the new school open to students in January, but the project ran into delays in the fall and winter caused by supply-chain issues, the B.C. floods and labour-force shortages due to COVID-19.
The new, $35-million school is set to replace the former Richard McBride Elementary, which dates back to 1929. Funding for the replacement school was announced in 2018 as part of the B.C. government’s program to replace or renovate seismically unsound schools.
A move-in date for the new building has not yet been announced.
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