Four months later, David Sardinas of Central Florida Electric was fine-tuning the electrical connections to provide power and sound throughout a brick and sod-lined courtyard.
“It’s beautiful,” Principal Donna Dunson said of the new entrance area.
A student plaza has taken shape, part of what Dunson calls a three-year “evolution of change” with academic, teaching, environment and technology improvements to create a school where students want to excel.
Robin Gibson, chair of the Lake Wales Charter Schools Foundation, said the plaza cost a bit more than $200,000, all from community donations.
The design was pulled together by Lake Wales landscape architect Marshall S. Whidden and Parlier Architects of Lake Wales, based on ideas Gibson brought from public parks during a visit to New York City.
Gibson said he liked having steps as seating areas and having the planters low enough to sit on.
“It’s really a multipurpose gathering place,” he said.
Positioned in front of the high school at 1 Highlander Way in Lake Wales, the new student plaza has a curved stage and steps on the east end, a backdrop of young Muskogee crape myrtle trees, five entrances, brick paver sections separated by sod and four trapezoid planters flanking a round platform in the center.
“If you make it all pavement and all bricks in the Florida heat, it becomes a frying pan,” Gibson said.
He said the sod will soften and cool the surface as well as provide natural drainage for rain.
A gentle slope down from the stage helps set the stage above the rest of the plaza. The planters will hold stands of bamboo — Dunson’s favorite, Gibson said.
And as planned, the platform will eventually house a human sundial: A place for people to stand to let their shadows tell the time, he said.
Gibson said a dedication ceremony will wait for the start of the next school year, after the bamboo is growing and concrete-sphere bollards in “Highlander orange” are installed at the site entrances.
The bollards are on order and should take about three weeks to arrive, Gibson said.
“It exceeded my expectations,” Gibson said. “I’m usually pretty good at visualizing from plans. (But) to be at ground level and see what it could do, was really more than I expected.”
General contractor Vincent Coconato of Oakwood Builders Inc. in Lake Wales said some of the subcontractors had workers there every day during the excavating and cement-pouring process.
“A lot of hard-working people did this,” Coconato said.
In addition to his respect for Level Line Concrete and Paradise Landscaping, Coconato also said he’d gained a new respect for electrical contractors.
Each planter has a sound and electrical outlet set into poured concrete walls, and the electrical workers were present through each step to set conduits with wire into the forms before the concrete was poured, he said.
Whidden was also there during each step to check the alignment, Coconato said.
Chris Reams, assistant principal of testing and facilities, said all wires will run to a pole at the school’s main entrance to hook into a sound board.
He also said each planter will have a faux rock speaker to provide background music or public addresses.
When asked if the curved stage and steps would work for graduation, Reams laughed.
“There’s not enough seating for that,” he said.
Phil Attinger may be reached at phil.attinger@newschief.com or 863-401-6981 and followed on Twitter at @PhilAttinger.
