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Wednesday, April 27, 2016
Two new City of Oaks educational facilities received building permits last week: a Wake County elementary school on Rogers Lane and private daycare center the Primrose Daycare in Brier Creek.
It’s shocking that a new, likely expensive daycare with a pretentious name like Primrose is getting built in Brier Creek, but at least it makes more sense than building such a facility in a beloved, historic park. As far as I know, there are no NIMBYs in Brier Creek. I guess its hard to be nostalgic for the beloved past of a place that didn’t really exist before the year 2000.
It appears as though Primrose already has a number of locations throughout the region: two locations in Raleigh, on Hilburn and Falls of Neuse roads, plus two in Cary, one is Morrisville, another in Wake Forest and so on.
Primrose’ registered trademark is “The Leader in Early Education and Care,®”which sort of reminds me of that scene in “Elf” when Will Ferrel’s character gets excited after discovering “The World’s Best Cup of Coffee” at a run-down diner in Manhattan.
Primrose brags on their website about creating a curriculum based around education at a time when “all-play” for children of that age was the norm.
Eight years later, it began franchising that model across the country, a move I’m sure made the school’s founders quite wealthy. In 2005, they apparently set a new record by opening 24 new schools in one year. Impressive!
The new location in Brier Creek will be built at 11151 Salem Glen Drive by D.W. Ward Construction Company. The 11,679 square-foot facility will cost around $1.5 million to construct, according to the permits.
A Primrose School in Warren, NJ
The site is located off TW Alexander Drive, sandwiched between the terrific Frankie’s Fun Park and the Triangle Christian Center & in front of the single-family home-style condominium development Avera Place. I wonder if parents will be hesitant to send their children to school located so close to such a tempting after-school diversion as the Triangle Christian Center.
The other new building to receive permits last week was for Wake County’s Elementary School E-40, which will be known as Rogers Lane Elementary. Not surprisingly, it will be located on a 20-acre site at 201 North Rogers Lane in East Raleigh near Anderson Point Park.
Designed as a prototype school by Boomerang Architects, Rogers Lane Elementary is planned as 101,266 square foot, 780-student school with a “core to support 900.” According to the project web site, “A three story classroom wing will be built perpendicular to the main corridor which contains the core facilities.”
Site plans for the new school
To date, the project has come in slightly over budget.
Construction, for example, was budgeted at about $17.7 million and is presently listed at $20.1 million. Public Infrastructure costs also came in about $200,000 more than anticipated, but both design and “miscellaneous contracts” have come in under projected costs.
Clancy & Theys will be handling the work.
It should be noted that although the permits received last week were filed under the “New Building” category, it appears as though Clancy & Theys may only be doing the sitework portion of the job at the time. It would explain why the construction cost listed on the permits is $19 million lower than the overall cost of construction for the project.
It is anticipated that Rogers Lane Elementary will open in August 2017, just in time for the 2017-2018 school year.
A rendering of the new Rogers Lane Elementary school
While we don’t know what the mascot for this new school will be, we did put together a database a little while back of all existing Wake County Schools mascots. Out of the 159 schools we looked at, 14 of them had chosen a cougar. For that and plenty more interesting information, check out the article here.
