Durango School District 9-R celebrated construction of the new Miller Middle School building reaching the halfway point on Wednesday morning with a topping out ceremony.
The Miller Middle School band Performed Deep Purple’s “Smoke on the Water” as members of the Bryan Construction team hoisted a beam, signed by the construction team and students, onto to two pillars to signify the groundwork being laid out.
The roughly $45 million project includes a 60,000-square-foot, three-story building where the football field currently sits east of the existing school building.
The plan also calls for keeping a more modern portion of the building, added in 2004, that’s located on the school’s east wing. An elevated bridge will connect the buildings.
Because of the construction, it’s been a hectic school year for first-year Miller Principal Vernadette Norman. However, she says it’s been a fun experience, and the construction has not been a distraction to students.
She said students have enjoyed looking out the window of the current east wing of the building and watching the new school develop.
“It’s been so much fun to see it go from a cement slab to framing to construction,” Norman said. “They’ve watched it all happen because in the summer, it was dirt.”
She said the pathway some students used to walked to school at the north end of the building was closed during the beginning of the year. But construction teams moved quickly to reopen the path.
Before raising the beam, those involved with the project spoke, including Bryan Construction Vice President Doug Woody. Woody spoke about the history of topping-out ceremonies and why it was important for the team and the school district to celebrate the moment.
“All too often, we just build buildings that oftentimes don’t necessarily serve a purpose,” he said. “I mean, they do as a building, but not really having a mission behind them.”
He said topping-out ceremonies have been around since 700 A.D. and originated from Scandinavian culture.
“A lot of the structures were wooden. So their belief was to give back to the tree spirits by having a some sort of piece of the tree,” he said.
“He added that once the needles fell off that tree, historical builders knew the wood was cured enough to enclose the building too.
Durango school district board of education secretary Andrea Parmenter said 78% of the labor being used for construction was local.
“I’ve never seen the attention to detail and the amount of community input that everybody had here,” she said. “So I think that we can see it’s on the right track; and when it’s finished, it’s going to be amazing for our students.”
Parmenter said construction of the building will be finished by fall semester 2024.
“This is a school that we hope to impact generations, and the way that we impact our generations is to make sure that we have learning environments to support our students and those skills that will help them in the future workplace,” said Superintendent Karen Cheser.
She said the district’s goal is to help each student find their “ikigai,” a Japanese concept that means to find one’s calling.
The new building will incorporate things such as outdoor learning spaces and use of natural light, as well as art and performance spaces.
Both the new building and renovations to the east wing will feature collaborative classrooms, where students of the same grade and subject matter can work together in larger groups.
It will also feature a new gymnasium with access to two basketball courts.
The building’s west wing, which includes the auditorium, will be torn down and the football field will be moved to that spot. There will be a dedicated drop-off zone for buses located to the west of the newly renovated building near the new football field.
There will also be additional staff parking and a parent drop-off site north of the new building.
tbrown@durangoherald.com
