SHELBY — Movement has been detected on the Shelby City School District’s plan to build a brand-new athletic complex at the high school campus.
A recommendation will be made at the Shelby Board of Education’s March 15 meeting to move forward with construction and financing of a $4 million athletic complex that will include a turf field, additional parking and a pedestrian plaza.
An architect’s rendering of the new complex provided by Garmann Miller will be unveiled at the meeting.
“Moving forward with the athletic complex is exciting and gratifying for the district because it is one more piece of the puzzle that helps complete our campus concept, which in turn will benefit our students in a myriad of ways,” said Supt. Tim Tarvin.
FINANCIAL FINAGLING: The catalyst in moving forward came in part from a presentation given by the district’s financial advisor, David Conley of Rockmill Financial Consulting, at a special board meeting on Monday evening.
Conley recommended the board move sooner rather than later in order to capture the lowest interest rate in financing the project.
“It really accelerated the whole process when David shared his perspective on financing and what the economy might be doing in the near future,” Tarvin said. “The board took that as their cue to get it going. We want to capture the lowest interest rate we can to get the most bang for our buck.”
Low interest rates is how Shelby came to a $4 million budget for the athletic complex in the first place.
Through a financial package from the district, plus Rover Pipeline revenue, Shelby City Schools was able to contribute $19.3 million towards the total needed to build a new Pre-K through eighth grade facility with zero cost to taxpayers. The other part of the facility will be paid for through the Ohio Facilities Construction Commission (OFCC) Classroom Facilities Assistance Program.
With the Pre-K through eighth grade building project, Certificates of Participation (COPs) function as a lease-purchase agreement, with the district renting the improvements from a bank or other third party. (The district will use COPs again to finance the athletic complex project.)
Conley created a repayment schedule for the building project stretching over 30 one-year rental agreements approved by the board every year for the next 30 years. This financing schedule was based on a 3.5 percent interest rate.
That interest rate has since been reduced to a 2.98 percent interest rate, saving the district $4 million on the Pre-K through eighth grade facility project.
“The board was already prepared to pay this amount for the Pre-K through eighth grade building,” Tarvin explained. “We saved $4 million from that building project that we were already willing to spend, so let’s take that and put it towards the athletic complex.”
Rover Pipeline is currently appealing how much it has to pay out to school districts, but Tarvin is confident an appeal will not affect the feasibility of either project.
“To safeguard the school district, (Conley) said don’t use 100 percent of the income from the first pipeline, so we’re going to use 65 percent of what we know we’re getting,” Tarvin said. “We’re not counting on any more from Rover to fund this athletic facility than we were two years ago when we financed the Pre-K through eighth grade building.
“It is a leap of faith, and we get that,” he said. “We’re still within what we considered a very low-risk situation to finance this project with Rover Pipeline money. We’ve been good stewards of taxpayer money, so we feel like we have a cushion even if things go completely south.”
STADIUM SAGA: District officials first introduced the idea of constructing a new football stadium on the November 2017 ballot.
The stadium issue was paired with the bond issue of building a new PreK-8 building that failed to pass three times in 12 months. The issue went to the polls in November 2017, May 2018 and November 2018.
In June 2019, the Shelby Board of Education financially authorized the “construction, furnishing and equipping of school facilities” for the pre-K though 8th grade building; the projected completion date is August of 2022.
That left the issue of W.W. Skiles Field.
Tarvin previously stated that keeping the stadium downtown was not an option due to safety concerns as well as unrealistic costs to build in a flood zone; he noted at a July 2020 board meeting the total cost of bringing Skiles up to code would be $11 million.
“An outside, independent agency has inspected our football stadium, and they told us in the spring (of 2017) that the life expectancy of this stadium is four to eight years,” Tarvin said.
Last year, the board accepted a donation from Grant Milliron of a new set of home bleachers that were previously used at Mansfield Motor Speedway, putting 3,600 seats on the home side. The visitor’s side bleachers would be used from the existing track plus two additional sections for a total of 1,200 visitor seats.
The new athletic complex project will also refurbish the existing eight tennis courts and softball field, relocate the baseball field to just north of the high school’s auxiliary gym to improve traffic flow, and add hundreds of new parking spaces.
Tarvin hopes that, weather permitting, the athletic complex project will be complete in August 2023.
As for Skiles Field and the other downtown properties owned by Shelby City Schools, the future is still in limbo.
“There are ongoing talks on how that property can be used to benefit the city of Shelby, but no longer as school district property,” Tarvin said. “How can the totality of the school district property downtown be used to benefit the city of Shelby?”
