S. Jordan to gain school-community center

SOUTH JORDAN — Kennecott Land's new Daybreak community will get a two-in-one facility with construction of the state's first joint-use school and community center.

The Jordan School Board recently approved the construction of the joint-use public elementary school, one of only a handful such facilities in the nation, in the Daybreak community being developed by Kennecott Land near 11400 South and 4500 West.

Joint use will allow for the best use of space by the community, officials said.

"We wanted to make a facility that could be used after school," said Kennecott Land president Peter McMahon.

The school and recreation center is not only joint-use, it's also a joint project between Kennecott and the Jordan School District with each going in on the land, architecture and construction costs.

According to McMahon, the Daybreak community is designed to give residents a unique living experience. And district Superintendent Barry Newbold said South Jordan needed a new elementary school. The joint-use facility will serve both purposes.

Having a community center and school on the same plot will allow the school more space than it would normally have and it also makes a statement.

"We're sending a message to the community that education is the focal point," Newbold said. "It's a place where knowledge is not only acquired and learned but the community itself can be a place where learning can be initiated."

Creating a new facility with a school and community center in the same place also allowed the district to tailor the school's design to teacher needs instead of using a standard layout.

Besides the architectural design, the Daybreak community will have a pond that will offer unique science learning opportunities for students, Newbold said.

The community center will offer fitness classes as well as education and social activities. Adults will be able to drop off students and then participate in activities in the center.

But having the two facilities together also created many problems that had to be worked out. To ensure safety and smooth traffic the driveways and parking lots had to be designed to accommodate vehicles just dropping children off, just going to the recreation center, those doing both and bus lanes.

An innovative security system will also be needed to keep patrons of the center from disturbing the children during school hours, Newbold said.

"The joint facility raised things that needed to be thought about," he said. "We had several meeting sessions of redesign to make sure that what we arrived at was the safest design."

Although having the two facilities together saves money, designing a new school layout took so much work that the benefits to the district were "not huge," Newbold said.

"Building a facility with another entity is a lot of work," he said. "We're treading new ground."

Even though the district has no plans to build more joint-use schools, officials are optimistic of the benefits to the Daybreak school even if "it's more work to do it this way," he said.

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