JE Dunn gets $60 million contract for new Wimauma school

JE Dunn Construction has been chosen to build a new $60 million middle school in Wimauma.

The school will be built on an 86-acre parcel of land with a high school — Aquilla J. Morgan High School — currently under construction and set to open next school year. An elementary school is also planned for the property.

JE Dunn has been charged with building a school that will accommodate up to 1,600 students that will open in time for the 2027-2028 school year.

Wimauma is in southeastern Hillsborough County and a rapidly growing community in the area.

According to Plan Hillsborough — a planning agency covering Tampa, Temple Terrace and Plant City, as well as unincorporated Hillsborough — the county is expected to grow by more than 530,000 people by 2050. This, it says, “is more than the current population of Tampa."

The new middle school, and two others, are meant to help address that growth.

A construction schedule for the project was not immediately available.

JE Dunn, a national firm with an office in Tampa, has a division dedicated to education. Among its works are a student housing project underway at the University of Wyoming, a graduate student housing project at Vanderbilt University in Nashville and a K-8 school in Beaufort, South Carolina.

Locally, it is the construction firm behind the $58.6 million reconstruction of Clearwater High School in Pinellas County.

That project included, but was not limited to, the demolition of 17 buildings and the construction of a half dozen new ones.