Hoar Construction earlier this month celebrated the groundbreaking of a new building for Oak Springs Elementary School in Austin, Texas.
The project is part of an ongoing bond program for Austin Independent School District (AISD), which was approved in 2022 and includes over $2 billion worth of capital projects for local schools. It is estimated to be completed in Spring 2027.
The new 83,000-square-foot, two-story building will replace the original school building, which was built in 1958. The upgraded school will include a new gym with a basketball court, full cafeteria, a theater, music studio and exterior rain garden. Designed to foster collaboration, the classrooms, referred to as studios, will have walls that open toward the hallways, enabling them to merge with adjacent spaces and encourage interactive learning among students and teachers.
The design of the building will also include high-grade concrete floors and a cool, pastel color pattern that fits with the school’s mascot, the Dolphins. There will also be a new playground on campus, which will be shared with the Austin Parks and Recreation Department, and a community center attached to the facility for public events. For student safety, this space will have a separate entrance from the rest of the school.
The existing building will continue to be used by the school until completion of the new facility and will then be demolished and converted into a parking lot. Huckabee, a Fort Worth-based education design firm and the founding brand of MOREgroup, is serving as the architect on the project.
Hoar is also working on a renovation project at O’Henry Middle School, part of the 2022 bond program. The company is also actively involved across the state of Texas on several higher education initiatives, including a $47.5 million, 44,000-square-foot Centralized Operational Reliability and Efficiency (CORE) facility on the campus of Texas A&M University-Central Texas in Killeen, Texas; an expansion of the University of Texas at Tyler School of Nursing in Tyler, Texas; and a five-story press box for Bowers Stadium at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas.
