McCarthy Building Companies is Constructing a New High School in Rancho Mirage

Nov. 22, 2010 - PRLog -- McCarthy Building Companies, Inc. www.mccarthy.com, one of the premier school builders in the U.S., is constructing the $99.3 million high school in Rancho Mirage for Palm Springs Unified School District (PSUSD). The 332,000-square-foot high school is being constructed on 60 plus acres near DaVall Drive and Ramon Road in the city of Rancho Mirage.

“The new 2,200 student capacity high school will alleviate overcrowding from other high schools in the district,” said Mike Sattley, PSUSD project manager. “Plus, constructing in the current economic climate is cost effective,” he added.  

Funding for the school is provided by local Bond Measures E and T. The school was also provided with a $3 million grant from the California Career Technical Education Program for construction of the culinary kitchen, multimedia/video classroom and mechanic/transportation lab.

Sattley added, “The District and McCarthy have been working well together on the high school, and the project is moving forward as scheduled.”

Serving as general contractor for the buildings and site package as well as construction manager for the offsite package, McCarthy recently completed mass grading and is currently constructing the underground site utilities and the building foundations. Sattley said he expects the structural steel portion of the buildings to be topped-out by mid-2011.

With architectural design by HDA Group of Gilbert, Arizona, the two-level steel structure and plaster finish school consists of nine buildings—an administration building, library, math and science, performing arts center, athletic building, English and social studies, cafeteria and a central plant. Included on-site are a football stadium with concessions, basketball and tennis courts, baseball, soccer and softball fields, plus parking areas for students and staff. The offsite package includes permanent utilities and a new roadway.

“The extensive utility work on this previously undeveloped site offers some of the most challenging aspects of this high school project,” said Bonnie Martin, McCarthy’s project director for the high school. “McCarthy is working closely with the local utility agencies (water, sewer and power) to construct the project’s utilities. We are also in close contact with the Division of the State Architect to obtain timely approvals on deferred submittals such as steel joists and the fire sprinkler system.”

“The location of the project poses further construction challenges,” she added. “Site conditions such as extremely sandy soil, site access, maintaining compaction, dust control and erosion also add to the project’s complexity.”

Construction scheduling calls for the stadium and playfields to be built concurrently with the buildings. The performing arts center will feature a state of the art sound system, acoustical balance, orchestra pit and supporting cast areas. The classroom buildings and the library will incorporate audio-visual equipment such as projectors and electric motorized screens and high speed data. The math and science building will house labs to support current technology, built in casework, chemical resistant countertops, sinks, gas and additional power.

The areas being built as part of the California Career Technical Education Program fund include a complete culinary kitchen with a dining/classroom area as well as a full commercial kitchen to practice real world application. The students will learn to prepare and plate food and then serve it to “customers” in the dining/classroom area. The mechanic/transportation lab includes two instructional classrooms adjacent to two full “garage labs” for hands on training in auto body and auto repair. The video technology classroom will be arranged like a recording studio, and multimedia labs will be built for video editing.

McCarthy is using Building Information Modeling (BIM) technology for the coordination of the underground utilities and the building’s MEP (mechanical, electrical and plumbing) systems.

Design consultants involved with the Rancho Mirage High School project include: HDA Design Group, Inc., architect; Kathy Davis & Associates, interior designer; Paragon Structural Design, Inc., structural engineer; and Kraemer Engineering Inc., mechanical engineer.

Construction began June 2010 and the school is scheduled to open in Fall 2013. McCarthy is also building the new Painted Hills Middle School in nearby Desert Hot Springs, which is scheduled to open in Fall 2011.

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McCarthy Building Companies, Inc. is the nation’s 10th largest domestic general contractor (Engineering News-Record, May 2010) and among the 5th largest education builders (Engineering News-Record, October 2008). 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 Newport Beach, McCarthy has offices in San Diego, 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.