Manteca Unified is completing a $15 million renovation of a 58,000-square-foot building the district purchased in the Manteca Industrial Park to house warehouses, offices and a kitchen for nutrition education.
The board approved the project awarded to CT Brayton & Sons of Escalon during Thursday's meeting.
The $15 million price tag includes $1.6 million in equipment, with the largest expense being new cold storage.
The district previously paid $6.4 million to purchase the building at 550 Carnegie St. that most recently housed Ecologic, a company that made environmentally friendly beverage containers.
Once the costs of design drawings, etc. are accounted for, the district will end up spending $23.6 million.
The money to finance the project comes from a special capital improvement fund, rather than the general fund that covers day-to-day school operations, or school bond funds
The new central warehouse, which would also include offices, will address five key concerns.
*The district did not have adequate storage space for nutrition services and pays $500,000 annually to lease space.
*The storage rooms at the district office site were in need of repair, with the expensive cold storage facilities essentially only being operational due to the proverbial “wire pressing” effort.
*Construction of the required 19,000 square feet of new space would cost $14 million, assuming no land is required.
*The district currently has 25,823 students and is expected to grow by 4,000 students by 2030, highlighting the need for more space to accommodate more students. By purchasing the former residential building from Ecologic, the district has three times as much space as it currently needs.
*This frees up urgently needed storage space in the district complex and makes more office space available.
The project will allow the district to house all nutrition education services in one location.
There will also be elements such as a test/training kitchen and existing office space that will be remodeled.
There is space for an additional central kitchen down the street.
The district is currently building two new elementary schools south of the 120 Bypass and one in Lathrop.
Typically, a central kitchen can serve four to six schools.
Each high school has a central kitchen, as do two elementary school locations.
The test kitchen/training kitchen could potentially one day be used to program career technical education programs such as culinary arts to support the training of high school students.
To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com