The new Covington Elementary School is set to open in August of 2018. The Kent School District will have a ground breaking ceremony May 5 at the school site. While the school district is ready to start building, there are still a few loose ends that need to be addressed.

The most important step the Kent School District has to take now is finding a contractor to build the school, Mike Newman said, the chief business officer for the Kent School District.

The school district is opening bids on May 3 for contractors, they will then find the best contractor with the best bid to start building the new school.

At least half a dozen contractors have some sort of school construction experience, Newman said.

“We have some great candidates that have shown interest,” Newman said.

If for some reason, the district doesn’t find a contractor, it will open another bid process to find the right candidate. Newman said he isn’t too worried about finding the right contractor. It is a good economic climate right now for contractors.

As for the property where the current elementary school sits, it will be selling it, but they have to offer it to the city of Covington first.

The current elementary school sits on 17 acres. The city of Covington is looking to buy three of the 17 acres, according to Richard Hart, the community development director for the city of Covington. The city gets the right of first offer, meaning that the Kent School district has to offer the land to the city first. If the city agrees on the proposed price for the property, it will make an offer before the school district offers it to anyone else, Hart said. The remaining 14 acres likely be sold to a private developer.

Covington has many plans if they acquire this land, Hart said. The city plans on constructing a large public plaza. The plaza could include a city hall facility, offices, hotels and other businesses.

“We want an area for people to come enjoy and get their business done,” Hart said.

The annual tree lighting ceremony and Covington Days would likely be held at the plaza once it was built. The plans are very vague at this point, and nothing is set in stone, Hart said. The city has a lot of ideas it is working on, but until they acquire the land, nothing can be done.

Hart has no idea when the property will be put on the market, and even when it does it will take years of planning before anything can be built.

“There are a lot of ideas that we can work with, but we have to wait to get the land to make set plans,” Hart said.

The most important part in acquiring the land is the finance aspect of it. The city has to figure out a method of funding and if the city will have the funding available when the property is offered to them.

It’s harder for smaller cities like Covington to get property and build a large plaza, compared to bigger cities. There are more resources in bigger cities that smaller cities just don’t have, Hart said.

The city is getting ideas from surrounding cities like Auburn, Kent, Renton and Burien, who have all built town centers even though they are smaller cities.

“We want an area where people can work, learn, play and live,” Hart said. “Kent Station is a great example of what we would like to see here in Covington.”

Kent Station stands out to Hart because it has a little bit of everything. It has a shopping center, restaurants, entertainment, places to live and Green River Community College is right across the street. They’re taking the idea of putting in an education element to the Covington plaza from Kent Station. What the city could potentially do is build a medical element at the plaza. Medical classes are offered in hospitals in Covington, so they could potentially move the classes to the plaza so students don’t have to go to the hospitals or other areas to take those classes, Hart said.

The potential plaza is still years away but the possibilities of what could be put there, are endless.