‘Kid friendly, kid inspired, kid focused’

Architecture and design firm DLR Group met with Creston Community School Board Monday to review the preliminary plans for the Early Childhood Center addition.

For the past few weeks, DLR Group and members of CCSD’s project team have visited different Iowa childhood centers and researched for the best ideas to put into the new ECC. Along with deciding the layout of the new building, they looked for environmental inspiration as well.

“Kid friendly, kid inspired, kid focused. Specifically, talking about health and well-being, not only of the students but the staff,” DLR Group architect and project manager Eric Beron said. “Calming environments, how can we create an environment that allows [kids] to explore their energy but at the same time be there for the purpose that they are, learn their ABCs and learn to be good humans.”

With current plans, the ECC will connect to the elementary/middle school building through the administration area.

“What this proposed plan is doing is consolidating the ECC and the EMS into one single point of entry,” DLR Group senior design leader Andrew Van Leeuwen said. “What that would do would allow for a safe and secure entry sequence. Once school starts, doors would be locked at the second set. Everyone who is arriving late or is a visitor would have to check in at the office, so it’s a really safe and secure entry to the facility.”

The proposed ECC would have separate areas for preschool and kindergarten, as well as a STEM and media room, a multi-purpose area and a gross motor space.

“For this age level, gross motor skills, kids learn not only their fine motor skills, but also their gross motor,” Van Leeuwen said. “This indoor gross motor space does have access to covered outdoor space as well as the playground equipment.”

The interior design of the addition will focus on hominess and warmth.

“We want kids to feel like they’re welcome and at home in this space, so we kind of played with the backyard greenhouse concept,” DLR associate and project architect Sam Rushenberg said. “We’re bringing in the greens and the blues, but we also came to an understanding that it’s not going to be anything overpowering or overwhelming, we’ll just use those in light little accents. The rest can be pretty neutral to allow space for kids to hang up their artwork.”

Drop-off

With the addition bringing more children to the campus, DLR Group looked for ways to change the parking and drop-off area for less traffic.

“Your system today is pretty efficient. There’s not a lot of cross traffic with people walking across the drive,” civil engineer Dawn Hottovy said. “It’s safe in that regard. That was kind of the goal with trying to reconfigure this.”

Hottovy explained that, if it weren’t for the preschoolers, they wouldn’t have changed anything. However, since preschool-aged children require hand-to-hand drop-off and pick-up, she had to reconfigure parking and drop-off lanes slightly.

“In our new scheme, we’re going to leave the buses in the front, but we’re going to push them west so that we can allow a preschool pull-off lane in the front,” Hottovy said. “This allows space for six to seven cars in the drive-by lane, so someone can go in, drop the kids off, and then they’re out of the site. This will be assigned preschool only, and we’ll keep the parents and the preschool and the bus separate, so there’s no cross traffic.”

She explained the biggest change would be to the EMS drop-off, which will be re-routed to the eastern parking lot.

“This is primarily staff, they’re usually there before parents and they leave after,” Hottovy said. “There’s some gap there that staff can get in and park and then 20, 30 minutes later, parents can pull through and drop-off or pick-up their kids. This would be a one-lane in. They’d loop around and they’d pull against the curb.”

When leaving the parking lot, parents will have the choice of either turning right into a one-way drive past the school or left back toward the high school.

DLR Group employees will present this information to the community 5 p.m. Jan. 2 at the EMS building.