Walnut Ridge Wrestling and Weight Room Renovation

Finding square footage inside the building you already have

An addition prices out a foundation, a frame, an envelope and a roof before it prices a single finish. Room taken from inside a building you already own prices out demolition and a wall. That is the whole argument here. The wrestling room gets larger by removing the masonry wall between it and the boys' locker room and rebuilding it further in. The fitness room exists because the vocal room, the practice rooms and the masonry between them come out. A drinking fountain alcove and a new corridor opening are cut from masonry that is already standing.

It is not free, because you inherit the building. The slab has to be X-rayed for existing utilities before it is cut, then trenched, backfilled and patched for the new underground sanitary. Asbestos floor tile, pipe insulation and hard joint insulation are abated, and asbestos-containing flooring comes out of the corridor, trainer's and laundry areas. Terrazzo shower floors and wall panels are removed. Where block is cut to prepare new plumbing fixture carriers, the wall is temporarily shored while it happens. None of that appears in the finished room and all of it is in the price.

The reused envelope also decides the mechanical. There is no new roof to set equipment on, so three rooftop units are grade-mounted outside the fitness wall on new concrete pads, with a new opening cut through brick and block and a steel lintel set to carry it, and 4-inch holes core-drilled three feet into the asphalt at each unit and filled with gravel to take condensate. Two mini-splits handle the office and the laundry room, whose loads have nothing to do with a gym floor. The west wall gets furring and 5/8-inch gypsum board carried to the deck and around the concrete beams to create a fire-rated barrier. Those are trades an addition would never have needed, and they are still the cheaper end of the comparison.

Phase 1A first, and why

The phase line is drawn where the building allows it. The wrestling room is one room with one entry: it can be finished, inspected and handed back while the rest of the athletic wing keeps working. Phase 1B is the opposite. It takes the men's and women's locker rooms, the showers, the team room, the corridor and the trainer's and laundry rooms at once, because they share walls, a slab and the sanitary lines running under it. There is no way to stage that work and still leave a team somewhere to change.

So 1A went first, and it is complete. Phase 1B is a proposal drawn against the project contingency and has not been built; the permit application for it went to the City of Columbus on January 20, 2026. That distinction is worth more than it sounds. Contingency is money the district has not spent and may still need elsewhere. Writing the second phase as a proposal against it means the district decides later — with the first room finished, the abatement quantities known and the actual condition of the slab established — whether this is where the contingency should go.

The agreement is built to survive either answer. Architecture and engineering for the Phase 1A wrestling room is carried inside it, along with preliminary design for Phases 2 and 3, so the next phase does not start from a blank sheet. Permit and inspection fees are included for 1A and 1B both, inspections are phased with the city, and the payment and performance bond carries a Phase 1B extension rather than requiring a new bond. Temporary walls are installed and relocated as the phasing moves, keeping students out of the active area. Third-party testing and balancing covers existing and new HVAC across all of Phase 1 — existing included, because new equipment tied into old distribution performs like the distribution. If 1B is authorized, none of that has to be bought again. If it is not, the district owns a finished wrestling room and a permitted set of drawings.