CHATSWORTH — Construction on Murray County High School’s new gym and band room is now in “full-swing,” said Murray County Schools Communications Coordinator Derichia Lynch.
During Monday’s monthly Murray County Board of Education meeting, board members approved 7-0 a bid of $46,979.50 from Geo-Hydro Engineers Inc. for construction material testing services at Murray County High.
The services provided by Geo-Hydro Engineers, which is based out of the Kennesaw area, include the testing of materials used in the construction of the gym project, such as concrete, steel, soil and asphalt, and providing the “quickest turnaround possible for all” jobs, according to its website.
“It’s a third-party testing, so the company doesn’t answer to the contractor or the architect; they answer to us directly,” said Murray County Schools Maintenance Director Chris Crow.
Crow said a majority of the testing for this project will be on “a lot of concrete.”
“There’s a lot of concrete and a lot of steel that we do,” Crow said. “That includes steel inspections, rebar inspections (and) concrete inspections to make sure that the mix design on the concrete that’s specified by an architect is correct and that they’re bringing us what they’re supposed to be bringing us for whatever application that they’re going to use for the building.”
That includes “rebar for the footings and reinforcement rebar for the interior block wall,” he said. “They check that to make sure it’s done.”
The gym will be built directly beside the old gym at 1001 Green Road. Considerably larger than the old gym, the new building is expected to hold 1,800 seats, as opposed to the roughly 1,100 the current gym has.
The gym will include a state-of-the-art band room, Lynch said.
The gym is one of the primary projects funded by the current Education Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax (ESPLOST), which was approved by Murray County residents to continue for five additional years or until $55 million is collected, in November. Other projects include improvements to North Murray High School athletics facilities such as an indoor hitting facility for the school’s baseball and softball teams and renovations to Murray County High’s building.
“Construction is taking place over there now (for the gym), shoring up the old foundation in the old gym,” Lynch said. “They’re making sure that the old foundation is nice and stable before they get started on the new, because with building it side-by-side you’ve also got to make sure you’re shoring up the old foundation you’re building next to.”
Lynch said the approved testing involves “just making sure that all of that land over there is viable.”
“We’ve had problems with flooding and sewage backup over there, so they moved all of the sewage lines and re-ran those into the city sewage on the other side (of the road),” she said. “That’s just a follow-up testing over there to make sure everything’s good as the build is officially starting.”
Lynch said the new gym building will be built closer to Green Road than the old building.
“All of the (construction) is really just kicking off now,” she said. “That’s really just the groundwork of getting it started.”
She said the gym has been pegged for a late 2024 to early 2025 completion, in time for next year’s basketball season.