The Mount Greylock School and School Building committees are expected to decide on Thursday which new school option to submit to the MSBA.
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Mount Greylock Regional School Committee plans Thursday to vote which of three building options it wants to advance to the Massachusetts School Building Authority for further study.
The School Committee will hold a joint meeting with the region's School Building Committee at 5:30 p.m. in the Mount Greylock Meeting Room.
The School Committee will consider the most up-to-date information from its architect and owner's project manager about the two addition/renovation plans and one new building project that are currently on the table.
Then the School Building Committee will vote on one design to recommend to the School Committee.
The School Committee has the final say on which — if any — option goes to the MSBA and moves on to the schematic design phase of development.
At last week's joint meeting of the two committees, each panel's chair addressed the scenario where the School Committee does not follow the recommendation of the School Building Committee.
"[SBC Chairman Mark Schiek] and I did discuss this," School Committee Chairwoman Carolyn Greene said. "Certainly, there is a possibility the School Committee could not accept the recommendation.
"In that case, I think we'd be delayed two months."
The July 30 vote is planned to keep the building project on track for an Aug. 6 MSBA deadline. If the district misses that deadline, its project will not be on the agenda for the MSBA's September board meeting. Miss that meeting, and the next MSBA board meeting is in November.
Greene said the Mount Greylock committee chairs considered posting a meeting for early next week in case there is no resolution from Thursday's session but decided that it is unlikely the School Committee would have any new information between Thursday and, say, Tuesday, on which to base a decision.
If the School Committee does not agree with the building committee's decision, "We would not select the final selection," Greene said. "We would take two months to see if we could reconcile.
"That's why the School Committee is [at the July 23 session]. That's why we had them at the last meeting, and that's why we'll have them at the next meeting."
Greene is one of two School Committee members who served on the building committee. Originally, the other seat was filled by Chris Dodig but currently it is occupied by Richard Cohen.
Earlier this summer, Greene encouraged as many other School Committee members as possible to attend building committee meetings in the audience, and she began posting them as School Committee meetings in case a quorum of the seven-member School Committee attended.
Schiek pointed out that the School Committee did have the authority to simply go another way if it does not agree with Thursday's decision.
"If the School Building Committee recommends A and the School Committee likes B, it can recommend B to the MSBA," Schiek said.
"I agree in principle," Greene replied. "But in practice, it's better to have the School Building Committee and the School Committee on the same page.
"That's why I'm suggesting it would be better to take more time."
Procedurally, Schiek plans to poll the School Building Committee on its preferences after Thursday's consultation with the architects from Design Partnership of Cambridge and the owner's project manager from Dore & Whittier.
Schiek said last week he would ask his committee members to assign two points to their first choice and one point to their second choice. Then those individual scores will be tallied, and the building committee will see if it has a clear front-runner for an up-or-down vote for two finalists to debate further before a deciding vote.
Presumably, the School Committee would then have a straight yes or no vote on whether to send the surviving option on to the MSBA.
Among the new information that the School Building Committee will have to consider on Thursday evening: updated cost estimates and estimated energy costs to operate each of the three options.
The committees heard preliminary cost projections at their July 23 meeting. Not surprisingly, the new building option would be the most expensive, with a price tag of $42 million to the two-town regional school district (after MSBA participation). The renovation options, R1c.1 and R1c.3, are projected to cost $32 million and $38 million, respectively, according to rough estimates developed by Dore and Whittier.
But those numbers likely will change after Dore and Whittier sat down this week with two independent cost estimators who have looked at the projects. Together, the three bodies were to reconcile the estimates and attempt to come up with the best possible numbers for a project that would not break ground — at the earliest — until summer 2016.
Dore and Whittier's Trip Elmore told the SBC last week that the energy models for each of the three options would be delivered to the committee members on Friday, July 24.
At last week's meeting, Design Partnership's Robert Bell told the committee that an early energy assessment found that R1c.1, which reuses the most square footage from the existing school building, would cost more to operate than R1c.3, which tears down most of the existing structure, keeping essentially the auditorium and gymnasium.
Architects have told the committee that a new build, labeled N3b.1, would be the most energy efficient alternative.
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Williams Seeking Town Approval for New Indoor Practice Facility
By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Planning Board last week gave Williams College the first approval it needs to build a 55,000-square foot indoor athletic facility on the north side of its campus.
Over the strenuous objection of a Southworth Street resident, the board found that the college's plan for a "multipurpose recreation center" or MRC off Stetson Road has adequate on-site parking to accommodate its use as an indoor practice facility to replace Towne Field House, which has been out of commission since last spring and was demolished this winter.
The college plans a pre-engineered metal that includes a 200-meter track ringing several tennis courts, storage for teams, restrooms, showers and a training room. The athletic surface also would be used as winter practice space for the school's softball and baseball teams, who, like tennis and indoor track, used to use the field house off Latham Street.
Since the planned structure is in the watershed of Eph's Pond, the college will be before the Conservation Commission with the project.
It also will be before the Zoning Board of Appeals, on Thursday, for a Development Plan Review and relief from the town bylaw limiting buildings to 35 feet in height. The new structure is designed to have a maximum height of 53 1/2 feet and an average roof height of 47 feet.
The additional height is needed for two reasons: to meet the NCAA requirement for clearance above center court on a competitive tennis surface (35 feet) and to include, on one side, a climbing wall, an element also lost when Towne Field House was razed.
The Planning Board had a few issues to resolve at its March 12 meeting. The most heavily discussed involved the parking determination for a use not listed in the town's zoning bylaws and a decision on whether access from town roads to the building site in the middle of Williams' campus was "functionally equivalent" to the access that would be required under the town's subdivision rules and regulations.
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