McCarthy Commemorates Construction Topping Out for New Classroom Buildings at Carlsbad High School

CARLSBAD, Calif. — McCarthy Building Companies, Inc., has topped out steel framing for 11 new education buildings at Carlsbad High School, located in Carlsbad, Calif. School district officials, project team members, construction crew workers and students gathered recently to celebrate the milestone.

The 11 one- and two-story education buildings will provide 99,000-square-feet of new classroom, performing arts, vocational education lab and food service space. Construction of these buildings represents the third and final phase of an overall $86-million renovation of Carlsbad High School, which began in June 2008. Final completion is slated for late December of this year.

Carlsbad High School is among eight schools within the Carlsbad Unified School District (CUSD) being constructed or modernized with funding from Proposition P, a $198-million bond measure passed by voters in 2006. Originally built in 1957, the high school currently has an enrollment of nearly 2,900 students.

The educational structures are being built on the site of the school’s former parking lot located on the east side of Carlsbad High School. McCarthy’s work crews have completed steel framing for all 11 buildings, and 80 percent of the exterior metal-stud framing. Preliminary roof work has been performed for the student facilities building. Construction of the courtyard adjacent to the existing gymnasium was finished last summer.

“The severe winter rains and flooding caused significant delays with the building foundations, which in turn affected the construction timeline,” said Craig Swenson, project director for McCarthy. “We"ve been working closely with the district, campus staff and Gafcon to re-sequence the construction schedule so that we"re able to have the classroom facilities completed and ready for students and faculty to move into during the winter break.”

The educational buildings will have curtainwalls on one side, with metal sunlight screens on the opposite sides to help reduce energy use. Once the education buildings are completed, crews will demolish many of the existing classroom buildings and convert the site into a new, larger parking lot on the south side of the campus.

In March of last year, a ribbon-cutting ceremony was held to commemorate the completion of the second phase of construction, which involved demolition of the existing stadium, installation of underground utility infrastructure and construction of a new 3,900-seat athletic stadium with aluminum bleachers and a synthetic track and field area. The stadium houses a new 10,000-square-foot building with locker rooms, restrooms and concession areas. The new stadium also features a Pop Warner-sponsored scoreboard with state-of-the-art LED technology for animated messaging.

The initial phase, performed in the later half of 2008, required McCarthy to set up temporary classroom facilities for students, along with the utilities to support these facilities.

Design consultants involved with the Carlsbad High School renovation project include Perkins+Will, architect; John A. Martin & Associates, structural engineer; Leighton Engineering, geotechnical engineer; Cornerstone Engineering, Inc., civil engineer; Johnson Consulting Engineers, Inc., electrical engineer; Donn C. Gilmore & Associates, mechanical engineer; and Lightfoot Planning Group as the landscape architect. The Planning Center provided the Environmental Impact Report.
Gafcon is the program manager. Erik Reuter is serving as director of school construction on behalf of the CUSD.

About McCarthy:
McCarthy Building Companies, Inc. is the nation's 10th largest domestic general contractor (Engineering News-Record, May 2010) and among the top 10 education builders (Engineering News-Record, October 2006). The firm has been building in the education market for the last 50 years. Committed to the construction of high performance buildings, the company has managed construction or built more than 300 K-12 school projects nationwide, totaling more than $2 billion in construction value, and nearly 100 higher education projects on more than 50 campuses. In addition to San Diego, McCarthy has offices in Newport Beach, Sacramento and San Francisco, Calif.; Phoenix; Las Vegas; St. Louis; Dallas and Atlanta. McCarthy is 100 percent employee owned. More information about the company is available online at www.mccarthy.com.