Before the school year begins, one of the oldest remaining school structures in Powell will be demolished.

Demolition work is underway at the old Powell Middle School. Nearby, construction of the new 58,000-square-foot middle school building is nearing completion.

The only part of the old school that will remain is the gym, which is slated to undergo significant renovations and improvements.

The middle school construction, renovation and demolition work are part of a state-funded $16.47 million project.

In order to keep the new middle school at the East Third Street location, work has been done in phases over the past few years. While the phased work has created challenges, school leaders and community members wanted to keep the school at the location near downtown, said Todd Wilder, coordinator of support services for Park County School District No. 1.

One particularly challenging area is where Phase I of the project, completed in 2012, connects with the old building.

“They’re going to have to be really careful there,” Wilder said. “It’s got us all worried how it’s going to come apart.”

Another challenging section is where the old two-story classroom section and library adjoin the gym. Crews must carefully separate the gym from the building before demolishing the old school, he said.

“You can’t get big, heavy equipment in there without running the risk of impacting that wall with the gym,” Wilder said. “So they’re going to do a very slow, methodical separation.”

Crews will create a 50-foot safe corridor between the gym and the old buildings. That is expected to take about 10 days, Wilder said.

Once that work is finished, the old two-story section and library area will be demolished.

“They’ll have that down in about two weeks,” Wilder said.

Groathouse Construction is the general contractor for the middle school project, and the demolition subcontractor is Precision Demolition from Casper.

Asbestos abatement on the old classroom building is wrapping up this week. Crews discovered about 7,000 square feet of asbestos material in the roofing over the 1938 section of the school, Wilder said. That material had to be cut out and removed before the building is demolished.

The oldest section of the middle school dates back to the 1930s, and other additions were completed in the 1950s and 1980s. Middle school principal Jason Sleep has described the old facility as a hodgepodge of additions.

Over the decades, the space was reutilized and classrooms were added without a lot of consideration of how education should be delivered in a middle school environment, Wilder said.

That’s not the case with the new middle school, which has been carefully planned with middle school students in mind, Sleep said last month.

When students begin classes in the new school on Aug. 26, the old structure will be down, but crews still may be separating metal from the bricks and other materials, Wilder said.

Construction fencing will continue to surround the area, and students will be routed around the area to get to the gym and old art/music wing on the east side of the building, he said. A new wing for music and art classes will be constructed over the coming year in the area where the two-story classroom section now stands.

In the spring and summer of 2016, crews will finish renovation of the gym, demolish the old music/art wing, construct a new parking lot and finish the site work, Wilder said.