- May 18, 2025
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Brando Fetzek and Todd Richardson have worked together before, though it was years ago and under very different circumstances.
Fetzek is vice president and project executive for NDC Construction Company and has been working on building the new K-8 school Lake Manatee for the last 11 months.
Richardson will be the school's first principal when it opens to the first batch of students for the coming school year. But he's actively involved in the building's progress.
Both walked the halls of Manatee High from 2001-2004, Fetzek as a student and Richardson as his assistant drum line director.
“Working on this very important project is full circle in a way,” Fetzek said. “I'm helping contribute to the community.”
Richardson said Fetzek has done very well in his career and is delighted to be reunited to work on such a project with the local team of NDC Construction Company.
Phase one of the school opens in August of 2025 which includes the administration office, media center, the two-story elementary school wing, and the courtyard. Phase two includes the gymnasium and the middle school, which will open in August 2026.
“Just since April 7, we've enrolled 40 students, and since January 1, we've enrolled 240,” said Richardson “We are in an area that is blossoming with growth, and this campus will be full any day now.”
The site is 40 acres and is located at 17210 Academic Ave. in Lakewood Ranch. There will be 1,692 student stations in grades K-8. The budget of the project is $105,609,280.
Due to the range and number of students, the design team and construction workers put a lot of thought into how they wanted the different spaces to turn out, which includes the drop off zone for students.
“The queuing loop goes around the pond and behind the building,” Fetzek said. “You've got plenty of queuing to get all of the traffic off the road.”
Due to younger pre-k students needing a little bit more time to get out of the car, they designed an area specifically for younger kids to be dropped off.
“There's a little loop that pulls them off the main car loop so they don't slow down the whole parent loop and give them the proper time and a little bit more safety since they're little,” said Jessica Roddenberry, the project manager from HKS Architects & Designers.
The main entry of the school will have canopy fencing with administration being on one side and dining off to the other.
In the dining room, there will be four serving lines as well as a grab and go section. When creating it, they thought about how to serve different age groups as students will differ in height and food preferences.
Roddenberry said it was important to make sure that those lines really accommodated the full breadth of students coming through.
Richardson stressed the importance of having big spaces that can be used for multiple purposes, including a space for the staff to collaborate.
“We can use it for overflow, for testing groups. We can use it to set up a book fair,” Richardson said. “Everything in here is also on wheels, so we can move everything to the side and make a grand space.”
In the media center, there will be areas for different age groups. One side will have a large built-in seating area for story time. On the other there will be cafe tables for the older students.
Richardson said everything in here is portable with the bookshelves being on wheels. IT Support will also be within the media center.
“Students can come in if they have an issue with their Chromebook, and it's also close enough to my office if I can't figure out how to work my printer,” Richardson joked.
In the shared spaces including the media center and dining center, the restrooms have small toilets for younger kids and standard-sized fixtures for older kids.
“Those are the spaces where we'll have some really intentional convergence of these age groups coming together and being able to mentor and share with one another,” Roddenberry said.
Two music rooms connect so students can move between practice rooms and ensemble and share some of these shared storage spaces. The music area of the school is in close proximity to the dining area where a stage is located as well as the gym which will be built as part of phase two.
The skills lab is an oversized classroom space that provides a lot of real estate to work with to provide students extra support according to Richardson. Two classrooms share one space to support all levels of learners.
Roddenberry said one of the ways that they tried to break down the scale of the school was to create learning neighborhoods based around a Manatee County ecosystem. The media center is what they call an ecotone where water and land come together, representing different age groups coming together.
Within these learning neighborhoods, students will be able to find a teacher, support specialist, guidance counselors all sitting and branded around those ecosystems.
Fetzek said from a construction perspective, they’re in the home stretch with getting the lighting in, ceiling tiles, flooring and other touches in for phase one.
“Our plan of attack is to have our normal construction finishing up during the day and in the evening, we'll have the flooring crews coming in,” Fetzek said. “That way we've got no issues with flooring trying to go down at the same time.”
There will be a six foot separation of where construction is taking place indoors in order to not disturb the students once they are on campus.
“We're wrapping up the exterior of those buildings now. When we say construction with the school being operational, we're really talking about interiors,” Fetzek said. “We're not anticipating any disruption whatsoever when conducting all the classes.”
Fetzek said if they keep the flow of construction going, they should be complete with phase two in February.
“That lands in a kind of awkward time for the district, but we're not going to say to our subcontractors, we'll come back in a couple months and let's finish,” Fetzek said. “We're going to keep them going and deliver this thing as fast as possible.”
