Grundy Area Vocational Center getting over $5.5 million in renovations

The Grundy Area Vocational Center (GAVC) is set to receive over $4 million in renovations pending the approval of the project from Morris, Coal City, Gardner and Minooka high schools, along with its own board.

GAVC Director Lance Copes said the projects will start in Summer 2026 and run Summer 2027 and Summer 2028 without interrupting any school or class time in the building.

“Those projects range from replacing all of the RTU’s on the building, redoing the outside sidewalks, adding some different emergency exits, and a large roofing project,” Copes said. “Our roof is about 29 years old and was supposed to last us about 15 years, so we feel really good about the life of that.”

An RTU is an electrical unit that’s used on HVAC systems.

Copes said the engineers also recommend that the GAVC replace the metal partitions with metal stud walls to line the hallway.

“Then when you replace some of the walls, there’s electrical,” Copes said. “There’s some lighting and power issues that we need to take care of. It’s really just generalized work for summer maintenance on a 54-year-old building.”

The cost of the renovations and maintenance is being covered by the four districts that have students attending the Grundy Area Vocational Center.

Morris Superintendent Craig Ortiz said the cost to the schools will add up to somewhere around $4 million, since the GAVC has some parts of the project it can cover within its own budget. This $4 million will be covered 28.6% by Morris, 27.8% by Coal City High School, 38.9% by Minooka Community High School, and 4.7% by Gardner South Wilmington High School.

“The last time we did health, life and safety work was about 10 years ago,” Copes said. “At that time, we were around 750 kids and now we’re knocking on the door between 850 and 900 this upcoming year, so we’re just trying to get it right and keep everyone safe.”