Fort Worth Firm Designs New School for Uvalde

School board members in Uvalde will be asked Monday night to approve the schematic design of a new campus to replace Robb Elementary School nearly one year after the school shooting.

It's the final step for an architecture firm in Fort Worth that's been working hand in hand with the community for the past seven months.

"We felt like it needed to be very deliberate and we needed to take the time the community needed to, to heal through this process," said Chris Huckabee, the chief executive officer of Huckabee, a firm known around the country for building schools.

His team in San Antonio - with several with family connections to Uvalde - led the project to design the new school.

"This has been a very tough project and the way we see it, this is part of their collective healing," Huckabee said.

His firm's involvement started about a week after the shooting. Former State Senator Beverly Powell from Burleson called Huckabee with a valid question.

"It was, how do you put children back in a, a building after a shooting like this, especially very young children?" Huckabee said. "And my statement to her was, of course, you don't. You know, we saw it with Sandy Hook and, with very young children, it's just, it's never appropriate to put them back in the building. So we started talking and, and her question was how can we help the community? You know, Uvalde is a really amazing community. They're wonderful people. They're hardworking. They've got great values but they don't have a lot of resources and so for them to, to just go out and build a school is gonna be very difficult, if not impossible. And we just started talking about, you know, is there any option out there?"

Huckabee started making calls to gauge interest in building a new school for Uvalde. He was asking partners in the industry to donate their services just as his firm had agreed to do.

"So what, what I'm most proud of is that I have not made a call related to building a new school for the Uvalde community that I've received a no. Every person that I have called and asked for help has, has said yes, they wholeheartedly have agreed to help," he said.

The first yes came from Jeoris General Contractors Construction, a San Antonio-based firm that agreed to partner with Huckabee and donate fees. Subcontractors and materials, though, would need payment.

Huckabee's second call kickstarted the fundraising efforts. The Butt family and H-E-B donated $10 million.

The Uvalde Moving Forward Foundation was then established to accept donations and oversee the project. It will own the new school and then donate it to the district.

With that part underway, Huckabee and his team shifted into the design phase which started in September 2022.

"With our team, the goal was to make this the community's school. This was not about outsiders coming to Uvalde and telling them, what they would get. It would be about taking our time and listening and making sure that the victims' families, survivors, the community as a whole, and certainly the school district guided the process," Huckabee explained.

Each visit to Uvalde involved individual meetings with four groups, presenting the design, getting input then back for more discussion.

In January, Huckabee and the Uvalde CISD Community Advisory Committee presented renderings of the exterior schematic design. The initial interior design schematic was previewed in March.

The final preview of schematics on April 11 revealed a rendering of a tree as a tribute to the lives lost on May 24, 2022. The tree includes two large branches, representing the two teachers who lost their lives, and 19 smaller branches representing the children who were victims.

Huckabee would not disclose details of the private conversations with families but did say, "there's a lot of ways in the building that are recognizing the victims in some very subtle ways and, and some not subtle ways through the building that have been guided with agreements of the families."

An animated video released last week showed the community what the school for second, third, and fourth graders will look like. Huckabee says the colors, the materials, outdoor play areas, and enhanced security are all a reflection of the community's requests and needs.

"This building would not be appropriate for other communities. This is a building that's appropriate for Uvalde and their heritage," Huckabee said. "This is an amazing community and they've been willing to share their thoughts. They've not been shy about that, and we've appreciated the way we've been able to work together to get to this point."

"There's a lot of ballistic glass in this building. There's lots of card access and entries and things like that. You can appreciate, there's been a keen eye on security around this building. And, we do have a security expert that's been very integral as part of the design to review everything in the building," Huckabee said. "Everything you would have on a modern building today with cameras, security access, closed vestibules; everything that you would want on a building today is certainly in this building but those things are pretty typical in a modern school today."

The Uvalde school board is scheduled to vote on the design at its meeting Monday night. Approval would allow the project to go out for bids. Huckabee believes what the board will see captures the heart of the community and its desires.

"It is very possible that the board may make some additional changes. I think they'll be minor if any. But at the end of Monday night, our goal is to receive approval from the board, and at that point, we will be wrapping up the construction documents. They've, of course, got to go through all the jurisdictional approvals. We'll go through bidding and then we'll start construction in July. So a lot of work to do between now and then, but not a lot of work to do on the design at this point. It's finished and it is exacting. I mean, the documents have every carpet color detail completed. So the contractor knows exactly what they're bidding on," he said.

If all goes as planned, the building will be complete in 18 months with students starting to acclimate to the new school in January 2025.

"It will become their building at that point, to do tours, get students comfortable coming back, and settling into the building, Huckabee said.

Cash and in-kind donations will fund the $60 million project. The nonprofit Uvalde Moving Forward Foundation will build the school, then donate it to the district. Huckabee has made numerous calls and presentations to secure funding. $10 million more stills need to be raised.

"What we've done is gone around the state and said, here's where we are and what we're doing," he said. "And we've asked communities to step up. Then, the Fort Worth community has humbled me with the amount of money that's been raised here and in Fort Worth. But Dallas has stepped up substantially, and really all over Texas. But I've been very proud of the DFW area and the dollars raised. We need to raise about 10 million more. I do feel like we'll get there. And my hope is that we a few more generous owners will step forward so we can see this to a reality."

The work of Huckabee's team officially ends when the design is approved. He says the project has been very emotional and taxing on professionals trained to design buildings but not prepared for the trauma of a community forever changed by the mass shooting that killed 19 children and two teachers. His team may step away for a bit but not forever.

"We'll be watching that to make sure everything's dialed in and doing what it should. So we won't be going away any time soon," he said. "They're just too passionate about this, but, but they need a little time away."

"I have heard from them and their comment is it's been the most difficult job they've ever done. I think at the end of the day, they'll be proud of what we, we delivered to the community," Huckabee said.