LONGMEADOW — The Middle School Building Committee voted to remove Options 5 and 6 from the potential building options and approved the project’s preliminary design pricing report at its May 1 meeting.
The committee previously reduced the original 10 options to seven at its April 2 meeting and later down to five at its April 17 meeting. With the May 1 vote, the project’s options have now been reduced to three. The pricing for these three options were discussed at the recent meeting.
Of the remaining options, the most expensive is Option 7’s addition and renovation of Williams Middle School, which has an estimated total cost of $153.5 million, Colliers Project Leaders stated. This project would move all students to Glenbrook Middle School during construction and would require non-reimbursable modulars to house all students.
Slightly below this cost is Option 8, which would involve building a new school on the Williams Middle School property. This plan would not disrupt current students during construction of the new school, due to its location on the current sports fields. The option is estimated at $152.1 million, Alan Minkus and Adam Dalessio of Colliers Project Leaders presented at the meeting.
The final option would complete work on the current Glenbrook Middle School building and is estimated at $80.1 million. This project would bring the building to modern code standards without optimizing its design and must be included in the submitted PDP report to the Massachusetts School Building Authority, Dalessio said.
With the committee’s May 1 decision, this plan is the only remaining option utilizing the Glenbrook property.
The two options that were removed during the meeting were Option 5’s addition and renovation of Glenbrook and Option 6’s new construction at Glenbrook. These project costs were estimated at $155.4 million and $153.8 million respectively, according to Colliers Project Leaders.
During discussion of the remaining options, Superintendent M. Martin O’Shea emphasized the importance of grouping each grade together, creating a wing for specials classrooms and including space for student social-emotional support in the finalized school plan. He stated that these were discussions raised at the town’s prior visioning sessions.
Following the presentation and discussion, the committee voted to approve the PDP report. This packet included information on the reviewed options, current site conditions and space summaries of each school, as stated in the report.
The committee’s next meeting will take place on June 12, Chair Armand Wray stated.
