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Date: 6/27/2022
AMHERST – The Amherst Elementary School Building Committee (AESBC) unanimously voted in favor of sending the preferred schematic report (PSR) of a new three-story building at the Fort River Elementary site to the Massachusetts School Building Authority (MSBA) at its June 24 meeting. The estimated cost of the project is $105.9 million.
The decision follows months of discussion and narrowing down options from both the Fort River and Wildwood sites. The committee used a criteria evaluation matrix and determined that a renovation and addition option at either site had no benefit over new construction and would be significantly disruptive to students and staff.
“Congratulations everybody and thank you to [Project Director] Margaret [Wood] and [DiNisco Design President] Donna [DiNisco] and team for putting this enormous packet of material together. This is a milestone. Great work committee, too,” Town Manager Paul Bockelman said.
Additionally, the over 1000-page report recognized that while the cost at Fort River is roughly $2 million more than Wildwood, “there is added value of improving the fields and open space at the Fort River site which was an important community priority. The additional cost has value when comparing the investment at the Wildwood site which would not benefit from open space.”
The criteria evaluation matrix synthesized the most important factors to the committee and public and ranked each possibility on a scale of 1 to 4 in terms of favorability for each factor. The criteria included cost, accessibility, minimizing construction duration and teaching and learning impacts and optimizing energy efficiency among other items. The three-story Fort River building led all options with 63 points from the 19 categories. It was the only site that ranked as “highly favorable” in six of the seven educational considerations.
The PSR said Fort River is located on a 31.5-acre site that is relatively flat. Located at 70 South East Street, the original 1973 building is an 82,000-gross-square-foot single-story building and has remained largely unchanged barring some maintenance repairs within the last 20 years. The PSR also said that the new school will achieve Amherst’s Net Zero Energy bylaw.
Fort River has two site access points along South East Street, and the site underwent a traffic analysis to try and study what issues could arise from the new building. The PSR noted that “based upon the traffic analysis the intersection to the north of the site at South East / Main / North East Streets as well as the intersection to the south at South East and College Street will increasingly become congested into the future.” The traffic analysis suggested signalization improvements at the intersections as well as widening South East Street to create an extended left-turn lane.
The MSBA Board of Directors is slated to meet for approval to proceed into the next stage, Schematic Design, on Aug. 31. The projected MSBA meeting for approval of the project scope and budget agreement is approximately February 2023 with the town voting in April 2023. The target date for starting construction is August 2024 with the anticipated move-in date of June 2026.
“I just want to give a big thanks to the team that pulled together the documents,” said AESBC Chair Cathy Schoen. “It’s been just terrific working with you all and seeing the volume of work that went in since we voted the preferred solution, I thank you very much. A lot of work went into what we just saw.”