As school leadership looks to reduce the cost of their planned high school construction project — with early estimates ranging from around $200 million to $400 million — they have put forth a new proposal showing significant reductions in square footage.
Project planners say they have identified ways to take nearly 40,000 square feet off preliminary project designs without sacrificing their goals for school programming.
The proposal reductions largely come from reducing classroom sizes, and considering multiple uses for some areas, though some plans — like an indoor track — may not make the final plan.
School leadership presented their Proposed Space Summary at a Dec. 3 meeting of the high school’s school building committee — a group of town officials from across the Island charged with bringing a project to voters. The document is an overview for a project of 220,000 gross square feet (the total amount of area enclosed within a building). This is down from initial estimates of about 260,000 gross square feet.
Reducing the cost of the building project has been top of mind for planners after project partner Tappé Architects estimates a low end of around $200 million for a renovation, and north of $350 million for different new construction or addition/renovation options.
Though this project will cost $1,500 per square foot constructed on average, how much the reduced square footage could save is not yet known, say planners. Different parts of the proposed building will cost more to build. Over the next several months, the building committee will be reviewing the proposal and deciding which areas to keep or cut.
“We put lots of things into the original cost models … that were driven by the educational program,” Sam Hart, district coordinator of Pathways and special projects, told The Times on Thursday. “One was the size of a classroom.”
Massachusetts, Hart explained, will require that a classroom in the high school’s project fall in a size range of around 825 to 950 square feet. Tappé’s initial estimates for the project were based on classrooms sized at the maximum 950 square feet. “We said, ‘Do we need 950, or could we go to 825?’” said Hart.
Rooms for desired offerings outlined in the project’s educational plan, such as makerspace areas with 3D printers and other machinery, also turned out to be able to accommodate other uses, making for a more efficient, smaller project. “We were able to create adjacencies where we would have more flexible spaces; where we could use those spaces in different ways,” Hart said.
The latest proposal still accounts for the school community’s various programming needs, Hart stressed. “We were not necessarily removing that space, but making it more flexible, so we could use it in a different way other times,” he said.
Where the new proposal saved space varied among different types of programming. Labs for fabrication, and for science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics (STEAM) programming were removed, saving nearly 3,000 square feet.
High school Principal Sara Dingledy made a point at the meeting that her school plans to keep these programs. A proposed space for marine service technology can serve many uses, she said. “We can be flexible with what that becomes, or what that’s used as. So I don’t want anyone to think that we’re abandoning STEAM, or fabrication, or Marine Tech, or HVAC.”
Reducing special education spaces saved around 3,600 square feet.
A 1,500-square-foot ensemble room was also removed in the new proposal, with the thought that other spaces could serve its purpose.
Another significant removal was a 4,000-square-feet indoor track.
Hart did acknowledge, however, that planners are still at a bird’s-eye view at this stage in the project. “We’re still at the 10,000-foot stage in terms of taking the educational program, translating it into square footage, and multiplying the cost per square foot. We’re trying to get into a reasonable square footage with the overall cost, knowing that it’d be an expensive project.”
The building committee, he said, will also have to make some serious decisions in this stage when it comes to square footage and school spaces.
“This group’s really got some tough decisions to make in the coming months,” he said.
Once this work is done and the building committee endorses the educational program, Tappé will begin work on schematic designs.
Though the new space proposal covers new construction or addition/renovation options, the third option for the project is a renovation of the current building.
However, some committee members are concerned that a renovation — one of three types of possible projects, along with new construction and an addition/renovation — might not get the school the reimbursement they’ve been after from the Massachusetts School Building Authority, a key project partner.
The authority offers a reimbursement rate of 38 percent, but member Mike Watts voiced concerns at the meeting that a renovation would not meet the authority’s minimum square footage requirements for reimbursement.
The high school is currently around 165,000 square feet, Watts noted repeatedly.
“We’re short 50,000 gross square feet in our existing footprint. To deliver the ed program, we have to meet the MSBA needs,” he said.
“I don’t know how we consider a renovation if we’re short 55,000 … to go to the MSBA and say, ‘You’re going to fund us,’ but we’re 55,000 short,” he added.
At the meeting, however, Tisbury planning board member Ben Robinson pushed back, speaking from experience about the Tisbury School’s recent experience with the MSBA.
“In the case of Tisbury, we were given an option to be funded for base renovation,” he noted.
Hart sympathized with Watts’ concerns while speaking to The Times, but advised caution. If a reimbursed project costs more than Vineyard taxpayers can stomach, he said, the high school reserves the right to go without the MSBA’s help, and put their money toward a renovation.
“I know exactly what Mike is saying,” Hart said, “but we just don’t know that yet, because we don’t know how much a new [construction] or addition/renovation costs. If that difference was more than our reimbursement, then the community might well go it alone.”
“It would be a shame to go into MSBA[‘s process] and realize we couldn’t take that money because it’s too expensive. Why would you do all this and not do that 38 percent reimbursement?”
The Dec. 3 meeting can be viewed at bit.ly/MVYPS_ZoomDecember3.
The Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School school building committee meets on the first and third Tuesday of every month.
