A Reno elementary school is getting not just a makeover, but an entirely new facility.
Echo Loder's Campus will soon have a brand new building, along with some new students from different area schools.
Today, the school's rebuilding project broke ground during a celebration ceremony.
Once complete, it will be home to students from Echo Loder, along with those rezoned from Corbett and Veterans Elementary Schools.
Tami Zimmerman, the Washoe County School District chief facilities management officer, told us, "We will look at all of those students and their needs and provide all their needs within this school."
The school district says the project was identified through a facility modernization plan study.
Zimmerman speaks to that: "So within the facility modernization plan, there was a study done. We looked at the infrastructure, we looked at the aging buildings, we looked at the community, and we had some surveys that came back from the community, and they said their needs, whether it's safety or security or those kinds of topics, and determined through that procedure that Echo Loder needed a rebuild to meet all of those needs."
She also adds, "So the groundbreaking is a culmination of about a year's process of planning and working with the City of Reno on the field that was adjacent to this and actually getting a permit, breaking ground, starting to put footings in, and starting to put those walls up, which is really exciting, and pretty soon we'll have it enclosed with a roof, and we'll have a topping-out party as well."
Marcus Culpepper, principal of Echo Loder Elementary School, was also at the groundbreaking today and told us, "We know that that's going to pay off tenfold in the future when we have a beautiful new state-of-the-art building with twice as many classrooms as we have now, with offices for all of our staff."
He goes on to say, "Just a few weeks ago I saw them doing plumbing and digging trenches, and now we see walls going up, so it's a very exciting time for our community."
The project is expected to cost approximately $58 million, and construction is set to wrap up in the summer of next year.
