After the announcement late last month about the switch in construction development companies for the Jackson Central-Merry football stadium, there are still many questions that are yet to be answered.
Greer Lashlee of Lashlee-Rich Construction appeared before the Education Vision Committee last week and before the Jackson-Madison County School Board capital committee this week discussing the project.
Deputy Superintendent Ricky Catlett also gave an update to the athletics committee, and a lot of the answers to question were something along the lines of “I don’t know yet” and followed with something like “I’ll let you know as soon as I find out.”
Lashlee-Rich was already working on the Central Administration Building – the new central office building for the district that will be housed in the old Madison Academic/Jackson High building – when JMCSS leadership and the football stadium’s former manager – Crocker Construction – agreed to part ways.
JMCSS awarded the contract to Lashlee-Rich since they were already working next door.
JMCSS and Crocker couldn’t agree on a guaranteed maximum price and final design, so now Lashlee-Rich is going through the process of looking at what all JMCSS wants to see in the stadium, sending out requests for proposals, selecting winning bids and awarding contracts before finalizing a guaranteed maximum price.
“That’s their next thing they want to do,” Catlett said on Tuesday, April 23. “They’ll go through the bidding process, and once that’s complete, they’ll be able to bring back a price tag for the whole project.”
The district celebrated a ground-breaking for the stadium in November, and work began that day tearing down fences.
By Christmas, a high amount of dirt had been moved for the stadium, but no work had been done since January.
The initial reasons given in February were because of the snowstorm that hit Jackson and froze the area for a week in January and the weeks of wet weather that followed before Catlett informed the athletics committee in March about the change in developer.
Catlett did remind the athletics committee that the artificial turf and bleachers for the stadium have already been ordered and are slated to be ready to place this summer. But because the project has been backed up, the manufacturers will be able to store both bleachers and turf until Lashlee-Rich is in position to install both.
“Since we’re almost starting over, it’s difficult to put a timeline on anything because they still haven’t gone through the bidding process,” Catlett said. “So we don’t know when it will happen, but I can tell you right now, JCM is getting a stadium. That will happen.”
Brandon Shields, brandon@jacksonpost.news
