The Illinois School For the Deaf has been listed as a part of over $46 million in improvements announced by the Capital Development Board last Thursday.
The funding is going toward deferred maintenance projects at state agencies that have been stalled due to a lack of investment by previous administrations, according to a press release.
Construction Administrator Ron Wright of the Capital Development Board says that over $1.7 million will be invested into new roofing on the ISD campus in Jacksonville: “We have a $1.7 million project replacing roofing systems at the High School building, the Power Plant, and the Laundry building. The Power Plant is about an 18,490 square-foot building. The High School Center is 36,900 square-foot, one story building. The Laundry #14 building is a 1,375 square-foot building. This project is in early design, what we call program analysis schematic design. It’s replacing 53,700 square-foot of roofing between the 3 buildings. This includes sheet metal roofs, a rubber membrane roof, insulation, and what we call the necessary ancillary accessories or sealing of the roof, water dams, any HVAC equipment that we have to cap and/or drain.”
Wright says that the project is one of more than 700 currently in the process of either being designed or placed out for bid. He says a contractor for the ISD project is currently being sought. The project’s funding is coming from the 6-year Rebuild Illinois state infrastructure plan.
Wright says more projects are on the way for Jacksonville in the near future: “There is a project in design over at the Correctional Center replacing some sally port gates for $486,000. We have locking systems at the prison for $1.6 million that’s in design. At the mental health facility at the prison, we have a camera system that’s going in. [At ISD], we have some renovation in classrooms, sprinklers going in, and we have an air conditioning unit that’s in design as well as the building automation or the software to run it effectively is at an estimated cost of $6.4 million. That’s almost nearly $10 million for ISD that’s in active design that have been selected as funded projects that are coming to the facility.”
Also involved in this round of current projects are improvements at the Alton Mental Health facility and Pere Marquette State Park in Grafton.
Wright says that the Capital Development Board oversees projects at over 8,700 state-owned buildings that cover over 100 million square feet of floor space around Illinois.