By Shelby Stewart-Soldan
ssoldan@mihomepaper.com
Brandon — During the regular meeting on Monday night, Brian Smilnak, project architect for the Brandon School District bond projects, provided an update to the Brandon board of education on the projects planned for summer 2025.
“So far we’re still just making sure the contractors have all their materials, all their supplies in order,” said Smilnak. “We haven’t heard anything bad or negative as far as delays of any type of material, so right now we’re planning to start on schedule.”
At Brandon High School, they plan to redo the west parking lot, the south parking lot, the east parking lot and the drive lanes. There will also be additional campus wayfinding signage. At the high school soccer field, they will replace the bleachers, some fencing, the concrete walkway and the protective netting. At the concession building they will install new interior finishes, plumbing and electrical improvements and they are adding the second serving window. Inside the high school, they will add some security upgrades and acoustic wall panels in the pool.
“We’re adding some cross corridor doors for security reasons and replacing hardware in the stairwells,” he said. “So when we have an after-hours event, no one can wander through the building or go upstairs.”
At Harvey-Swanson Elementary, they plan to redo the interior of the concession stand as well, including plumbing and electrical work, replacing the two roll-down serving window shutters and the exterior doors. They will also update the bathrooms attached to the elementary school with interior finishes, replacing the fixtures, exterior doors, and redoing the ADA accessible ramp to the bathrooms, the stairs, the retaining wall and the fencing.
At Brandon Middle School, they will redo the north parking lot, the south parking lot, the west drive lanes, and the parking lots at the transportation building and the maintenance building. They also will redo some of the HVAC on top of the middle school roof.
“We do want to start some projects over spring break,” he said. “We’ll be putting up the acoustic panels in the pool, doing some electrical work and start some demolition up on top of the roof at the middle school, and then we do want to start the concession building at the high school as well, we want to get a jump on some of these projects during spring break, and it looks like we’ll be able to do that. Contractors are ready, so we’ll get a jump on as much as we can.”
Smilnak said he plans to present a more concrete timeline at a future board meeting.