School needs at least $27.5m even without cafeterias, architects say

By Alice Waugh

The School Building Advisory Committee’s architectural consultants last week presented detailed lists of repair and renovation options and cost estimates for the Lincoln School that will be the topic of town-wide discussion at the State of the Town meeting this Saturday, Nov. 15 at 9 a.m. in the Brooks auditorium.

Also on the agenda for Saturday’s meeting is a presentation and discussion of ideas for a community center in Lincoln that could house the Council on Aging (now occupying inadequate space in Bemis Hall) and perhaps the Parks and Recreation Department as well, if the combined facility were located on the school campus. More than 100 residents brainstormed about various community sites at a charrette on October 8 (see the Lincoln Squirrel, Oct. 14, 2014).

At a multiboard meeting about the school on November 5, Dore and Whittier Architects unveiled two lists of projects—one with facilities needs and the other with programmatic or educational needs—and grouped the items on each list into four priority categories: immediate needs, near-term needs, deferred needs and alternates, or different methods for fixing the same problem (see table below). However, certain items across categories would have to be grouped together for practical and legal reasons into “realistic actionable items,” explained Jason Boone of Dore and Whittier.

The firm estimated that the school has an immediate need for work costing $8.4 million that includes a new roof for the entire building, a fire suppression and fire alarm system, a new exterior wall for the Reed gym, a new boiler room and pumping equipment for the Smith building, and an emergency generator. These are projects that architects have defined as necessary to the basic safety and comfort of students and staff for a “warm, safe and dry” school.

According to state law, when school renovation costs exceed a certain percentage of the building’s assessed value, the building must also be brought up to current code for handicapped accessibility. For the Lincoln School, the trigger point is about $6.5 million—well below the $8.4 million identified as the cost of meeting the school’s most critical facilities needs. There are further cost triggers for bringing the building up to structural code as well.

The “near-term need” category of facilities projects includes all the accessibility-code trigger work that would have to be done along with the immediate needs, plus repairs and upgrades to the electrical infrastructure, classroom lighting, plumbing, and mechanical ventilation systems, structural code compliance work and intruder alarms. The total cost for this category is $19.1 million, bringing the price tag for addressing the school’s immediate and near-term needs to $27.5 million.

Deferred facilities needs include things like interior finishes, upgrading the remaining lighting, technology infrastructure upgrades, new furnishings and equipment, site improvements (upgrades to fields, paving and other outdoor portions of the campus), and a gut renovation of the girls’ locker room in the Brooks gym. Dore and Whittier estimates that work would cost a total of $7.9 million.

If all three categories of facilities needs were met (immediate, near-term and deferred), the grand total would be about $35 million. But that figure still would not include any of the educational/programmatic needs that have also been identified by school officials and previous studies. As with the facilities needs, Dore and Whittier grouped those educational needs into immediate, near-term and deferred needs as well as alternates.

The immediate educational needs consist of acoustical upgrades (primarily new  sound-absorbing ceilings) and would cost just $339,000. However, near-term educational needs—which include two full-prep kitchens and cafeterias, small group breakout spaces, new second-grade classrooms and a reconfigured site circulation pattern to resolve bus/car/pedestrian conflicts—would total $11.8 million. Deferred educational needs such as reconfiguring the science classrooms, a gut renovation of the second-grade classrooms, field and drainage work, a new warming kitchen, construction of classroom “hub” areas and new art spaces would total about $14.2 million, the architects said.

At an earlier meeting in October, Dore and Whittier presented four strategic options that the town could choose from. Option 1 would include capital improvements only (meaning the immediate and near-term facilities needs later specified on November 5). Option 2 offers an “a la carte” approach that would include everything in Option 1 plus any of three programmatic projects: cafeterias/kitchens, second-grade classrooms, and/or small group rooms. Option 3 comprises various ways to address all facilities and programmatic needs, while Option 4—an entirely new school—would now cost between $55 million and $68 million in 2014 dollars, the firm estimated.

At last week’s meeting, town officials asked the architects which of these repair/renovation approaches would be eligible for state funding. In reply, Boone cautioned that the Massachusetts School Building Authority generally does not fund a school project unless that project addresses all identified facilities and educational needs, not just a subset chosen by the town.

The MSBA process “defines the program first and what spaces you need to fulfill that mission,” Boone said. “They don’t pick a price and then adjust the program needs to that figure.”

School Committee member Tim Christenfeld also noted that “where you start with the MSBA is not necessarily where you end up,” since it takes years for a town to wend its way through the funding approval process, and prices and priorities may change during that time.

SBAC member Vin Cannistraro asked if the MSBA would be willing to fund a comprehensive building project for just one of the school segments ( Smith K-4 or Brooks 5-8), but School Committee chair Jennifer Glass replied that the Lincoln School has been considered a single entity since the link between the buildings was created in the 1990s.

At the State of the Town meeting, Dore and Whittier will also present an “in-between number” less than $27.5 million that would include some but not all of the near-term facilities needs and would represent “the lowest reasonable actionable project,” though that approach “is probably not something we would recommend doing,” Boone said.

Officials urged residents to come to the State of the Town meeting on Saturday to learn more and offer their views. Although no formal decisions will be made on Saturday, the discussion and feedback from residents will inform whatever funding proposals might be presented for a vote at the Annual Town Meeting four months from now in March 2015.