WEST SPRINGFIELD – During the West Springfield School Committee meeting on March 26 William Cunniff, Project Director for NV5 and Ryszard Szczypek, Principal Architect for TSKP Studio in Hartford, gave a presentation to update the public on the design and projected schedule for the Philip G. Coburn Elementary School project. The town of West Springfield is currently working alongside the Massachusetts School Building Authority (MSBA) to construct a new Coburn Elementary School building.

Superintendent of Schools Michael J. Richard said, “The work they have been doing alongside the school department and the Planning and Construction Committee in town has been long and ongoing, but we are making some very good progress.”

Through a series of slides, Cunniff explained the timeline of the project. On Oct. 31, 2018, the MSBA voted to move the project to the schematic design phase. The next steps include the project scope and budget agreement, which will be discussed at an MSBA Board meeting on Aug. 28 and a MSBA project scope and budget vote, which will memorialize the project budget and establish the maximum state grant.

In June, NV5 and TSKP Studio will take a draft of their preferred schematic report to the Planning and Construction Committee. If the preferred schematic report is approved by the Planning and Construction committee, the report will be submitted on July 10 to the MSBA.

“We’re working very closely with school administration and with the Planning and Construction Committee over the past five months to begin to develop these plans in earnest for more details relative to site design and materials, floor plans, layouts, etc.,” Cunniff shared.

Cunniff continued, “We will have two independent estimating firms. They’ll take the schematic design plans and both of these estimating firms will do independent estimates. They’ll exchange the estimates and reconcile any differences and costs, and then we take those values and we insert them into the MSBA Excel spreadsheet called the ‘Total Project Budget Summary.’ Then it will calculate out what is the estimated grant that the state will provide and what will be the town of West Springfield’s share.”

Cunniff explained through a slideshow presentation that the MSBA has a cap of what they can fund per square foot for construction projects annually. In 2011, when the West Springfield High School was built, the price per square foot was $274 to build. This aligned with the MSBA construction limit, which was $275 in 2011. In 2019, the MSBA construction limit is expected to be $348. This is expected to increase in 2020 to $364 and again in 2021 to $380 per year. It is estimated that the Coburn Elementary project will cost approximately $465 per square foot to construct during the length of the project.

“The MSBA cap hasn’t quite caught up with the actual construction costs,” Cunniff said. Cunniff shared that the completion date for the project is 2020. Szczypek presented the building plans for the Coburn Elementary School at the School Committee meeting. The entrance will include a blue canopy. The right side of the building will be a brick structure. A three-story building block will include pre-k, kindergarten and third grade classrooms.

“What we have determined through the PCC is that the preferred design would include a whitish-colored masonry, concrete block, and a red brick color. The final colors have not been determined, but this is enough for us to be able to go to MSBA and say ‘these are the kinds of materials that we’re talking about and we need to forward this information to our cost estimators,” Szczypek explained.

Szczypek continued, “We have looked at the exterior material as a budget line item when we first did the study that went to MSBA, which they then approved and the material cost for this is a little bit less. We are not raising the cost of the exterior material. We are well within what we had originally projected for the cost of the exterior.”

Szczypek shared that the building is planned to look like it is in smaller components. “The composition of the building is as though it were several buildings combined. This is a fairly large building. As Bill said, it’s 118,000 square feet. It’s three stories, mostly. We wanted to break this mass down into smaller components,” Szczypek said.

The layout plan also features a play area, basketball court, a designated pre-K play area and two art rooms.

West Springfield Mayor William Reichelt said he thinks the planned exterior design will fit with the neighborhood. “From the last meeting to this meeting, I love the exterior design now. I think it fits much better in the neighborhood. I think it looks great,” Reichelt said.

To view graphics and site plan diagrams shown in the meeting, visit www.facebook.com/westspringfield.ma. For more information on the project, visit the Massachusetts School Building Authority at www.massschoolbuildings.org.