View Article from Vallejo Times-Herald 

By Thomas Gase | tgase@timesheraldonline.com | Vallejo Times Herald

After seven years of being condemned, a new gym is finally coming back at 1 Positive Place on Mare Island.

Griffin Technology Academy Schools and Mare Island Technology Academy last week hosted the groundbreaking for the new gym, featuring staff and student speakers as well as local representatives and dignitaries. The new gym will allow students to have expanded space for physical education and also include additional classrooms.

The event came about a month after Griffin Technology Academies announced it had received approval from the Vallejo City Unified School District and signed a construction contract with a local general contractor.

The construction of the new gym at Mare Island Technology Academy, a 6-12th grade set of schools, will replace the former Omega Boys and Girls Club gymnasium at Positive Place, a building that was condemned and given an eviction notice as an “unsafe building” seven years ago. According to Griffin Technology Academy Superintendent Nick Driver, the construction process will take approximately a year to finish.

The new $7.9 million gym will be used by GTA students from MIT Academy as well as its sister schools, Griffin Academy Middle and High School.

Officials say the gym will provide a venue and physical and academic education for the local Vallejo community through a rekindled partnership with Omega Boys and Girls Club.

“This is a long day coming,” Driver told the Times-Herald on Tuesday. “We’ve been anticipating this day for many years, even before I became superintendent two and half years ago. This is a very proud moment, not just for me, but the whole community that gets to come together.”

Griffin Technology Academy received initial state funding from the state Office of Public School Construction more than five years ago, money that enabled the school administration to go through the approval processes that resulted in final OPSC project approval a few months ago. Since then, the academy has been working closely with its landlord, the school district, to gain the required local approval.

That approval was granted at a district board meeting in July, allowing GTA to sign a contract with local general contractor BHM Construction, the lowest bidder in the required public bidding process that was completed in June. BHM is also contracted to rebuild the entire Mare Island Technology Academy campus, once the district grants that approval later this year.

“We are excited to partner with GTA to build a new gymnasium for Vallejo students,” said BHM Construction CEO Jeffery Mazet said in August. “We were attracted to bid on this project because of the need for new construction in Vallejo, and GTA’s commitment to building with local unionized labor.”

The academy has a meeting with the school district on Wednesday, when it hopes to get approval on the next phase of the project concerning the campus around the gym. According to Driver, he’s hoping that final approval can come as the talks center around a waterline that is running through the campus.