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Date: 12/15/2021
HOLYOKE – During the Holyoke School Building Committee’s Dec. 3 meeting, the committee discussed the merits of using the current William R. Peck Middle School location or the vacant lot on Chestnut Street owned by the Housing Authority for the site for the potential new middle school in Holyoke.
To start the discussion, Superintendent/Receiver Anthony Soto said the demolition of the current Peck site would be fully reimbursed.
“Included in the Peck numbers is what it would costs to demolish the building, we would be getting reimbursed for that. If we built anywhere else and moved the kids out of Peck, and the city decided to tear down Peck and do something else with it, that would not be reimbursed,” he said.
As it stands, Soto said electrical capabilities result in a significant amount of maintenance at the Peck school every year.
“Peck is so inefficient we are spending well over $600,000 a year just to maintain that facility. It is the only school we do not have air conditioning [in] and it is not because we cannot afford air conditioners, it is because there is not enough electrical capacity,” Soto said. “To upgrade the electrical in that building would be an astronomical amount of money.”
Between new windows, a new roof, an electrical upgrade and new boilers, Soto said the Massachusetts School Building Authority would not cover the repair costs if the new school was put in a different location.
“They are not going to put money into a building that needs to be torn down,” he said.
Whitney Anderson, the facilities administrator for Holyoke Public Schools, said based on his estimates the city would be paying about $20 million to renovate the school on its own.
By building a new school at the Peck location, committee member Erin Linville said the city would save a significant amount of money on operational costs each year based on some initial estimates.
“If you take Peck offline and build a new Peck, then you are saving about $400,000 in operating costs,” she said.
Overall, the operational cost would drop from the current $659,121 per year to about $252,319.
Holyoke Mayor Joshua Garcia said because the Chestnut Street property is owned by the Housing Authority, it is not an option for the school.
“There was an agreement in place between the Housing Authority and the city of Holyoke as it relates to the Chestnut Street site, which expires on Dec. 13. I did connect briefly with the executive director over there to see whether or not as we continue to explore our options here if they had interest in doing anything with that property or if we could extend the agreement and it sounds like there is some interest in doing some housing development,” he said. “Given that the agreement is expiring on [Dec. 13] with no real interest in extending, the Chestnut Street site is no longer an option.”
Committee member Mark Lubold said the Chestnut Street site would be the perfect location for a school but was also in favor of demolishing the Peck site.
“I was hoping that Chestnut Street site was available, it has been vacant so long and whoever owns it has just been sitting on it. We have all that great development that has occurred at the library, Oak Hill Homes, CVS, the bank, the new buildings across from the library and I think a new school there would complete that neighborhood,” he said.
Soto said it could be possible to demolish Peck and still build a new school at the Chestnut Street location.
“Whether a build a new school at Peck or a new school at Chestnut, if we are closing Peck either way, I thought both designs were great, and we could make them work. The lot at Chestnut is easier and I do not think folks wanted to see the Peck building sitting there vacant, programmatically the designs were very similar,” he said.
Based on a previous schematic design report from a previous committee’s work in 2019, Linville said it would cost roughly $8 million less to build a new school on the vacant Chestnut Street lot.
After committee member Will Puello said he was against tearing down Peck because of the number of students currently housed in that building, Soto said he is already working on consolidating students into less buildings.
“We have to move to an elementary, middle school, high school model. In my opinion it is one of the biggest contributors to us going to a receivership, we have too many buildings. We have to go through a process of redistricting and consolidating our portfolio so we can offer more programming,” he said. “We have buildings that have the capacity to fit 400 or 500 students in them and there are only 200 students in them.”
Ultimately the committee agreed to move forward with the Peck site with a 8-4 vote.