Work Commences at Ground-Up SoCal K-5 School

By Eric Althoff

MENIFEE, Calif.—C.W. Driver Companies is now at work on the $54.5 million Menifee Union School District Elementary School #15. The K-5 school’s construction will take place over 46 acres, with the campus designed in a horseshoe shape envisioned by DLR Group | BakerNowicki.

The 75,000-square-foot Riverside County school will be home to nearly two dozen classrooms as well as a dedicated kindergarten building. In addition, the new school will feature a modern library and information center, administration area, cafeteria as well as a large multipurpose room with a state-of-the-art audiovisual system.

On the exterior, the school will offer playgrounds, track fields, pickup/dropoff area, as well as a parking lot for over 100 vehicles and various spaces devoted to gatherings as well. Because of the extensive nature of the redesign of the parcel of land, street renovations to the adjoining Wickerd Road are also necessary.

When the school comes online in July 2024, it will be able to host approximately 600 students, according to estimates from the general contractor and designers.

“This is the second school we’ve worked on for the Menifee Union School District, with Menifee Valley Middle School being the first,” Andy Feth, project executive at C.W. Driver Companies, said in a statement in connection with the recent groundbreaking. “In that instance, it was an intricate expansion of an existing campus, while this is a completely new build from the ground up.”

In a subsequent statement emailed to School Construction News, C.W. Driver personnel said that to keep the project moving along in a timely fashion, the general contractor had to get creative with its various partners considering the construction work experienced a rather sizable budget overrun.

“Much of the savings were realized during the short window between bid opening and award, which is a testament to the overall project team’s determination and hard work,” said Eric Metzger, senior project manager for C.W. Driver.

Elsewhere in the Golden State, C.W. Driver’s education-related CV of K-12 projects includes their work at San Diego USD’s Nipaquay Elementary School, Grossmont UHSD’s El Capitan High School Events Center, San Dieguito UHSD’s Torrey Pines HS Modernization and Chino Valley USD’s New K-8 The Preserve II School. The firm boasts an educational portfolio of over 150 projects in its century-plus of existence.

C.W. Driver was founded in 1919, and offers expertise in the school construction sector entailing such expertise as construction management.