PROGRESS: Hunt School project moves towards 2022 opening

Brian Fahrendholz, the district's director of operations and maintenance, said construction activities will ramp up in March, with the goal to complete the school in time for the beginning of the 2022-23 school year.

The previous school was demolished in June 2019, and a new school is being built in the same vicinity.

Hunt School, named for Dr. Andrew Hunt, a physician and dentist who was also the first president of the Sioux City School Board, opened in the midtown area in 1906. It closed in May after 113 years of housing Sioux City students, and was razed in June.

"I love Hunt, so this is kind of difficult," said Josh Steinhoff, who was watching the action with two daughters, age 3 and 6, going on west across Jackson Street from them.

The school was demolished to make room for a new school with the same name. That will be coming just south of the old one in the 1900 and 2000 blocks of Jackson and Nebraska streets. The current site will be used for part of the new L-shaped building and a teacher parking lot.

Hunt was by far the oldest school in the public system. The oldest remaining district school is Sunnyside Elementary, which dates to 1957.

The $20.5 million project is anticipated for completion in August 2022. Until it's ready, neighborhood elementary students will attend classes in the former Crescent Park Elementary School.

After the June demolition, the latter part of 2019 included site preparation for the building that will be constructed, which included utilities and street work in the vicinity. That work is on track to be completed in a few months, once the winter is over, and by June the goal is to see the Sioux City School Board award a substantial bid package to build the school.

If that occurs by June, it is possible the main building construction could begin in August, Fahrendholz said.

FEH Design, of Sioux City, is the architecture firm designing the building.

"(FEH) has incorporated a very timeless and historic looking exterior design to Hunt Elementary that we find to be extremely complimentary to the history of the neighborhood," said Fahrendholz.

He said because Hunt had been designated as one of the district's specialty school, known as A-plus for arts and music, there could be "some unique design elements."

The possibilities include a simple lighting system that could be built along with a stage that will adjoin the gymnasium.  A multi-purpose room could also be added, which would function as a black box room, which is a relatively recent innovation in the theater world, in which a simple performance can be held in a room with black walls.

"These are ideas we are trying to work in, they aren't guaranteed," Fashrendholz said.