A familiar firm has been selected to design the new Watertown Middle School, but members of the School Building Committee had concerns about getting the firm’s “A Team,” and whether the City can afford to build the kind of school they want for the students of Watertown.
Wednesday night, the School Building Committee selected Ai3 Architects to do the feasibility study for the new middle school. The firm that designed Watertown’s three elementary schools and the new high school. Ai3 was one of four finalists, and narrowly got the top ranking by the nine members of the committee.
Each firm presented ideas for how they would approach building the school. After the presentations, City Council President Mark Sideris, who chairs the School Building Committee, had concerns about the cost of the project. City Manager George Proakis has budgeted nearly $85 million for the project after seeing proposals that would be in the range of $110 million.
“What seems to be more obvious to me at this point is that we don’t have enough money to do this project the right way,” he said. “The reason I say this, the right way, is I don’t want to be putting on a patch and then coming back and someone saying 10 years from now, ‘Why did you do that.'”
He added that he thinks Watertown should go ahead with the feasibility study to see what the options are and how much they will cost before making a decision on if the City can afford to build the new school.
There could be multiple approaches to building the new school. One would be to renovate the newest part of the school (built in 1998) and demolish the old part from 1922 and replace it with new buildings but keep the auditorium and gymnasium and work on them at a later date. Another option is to replace the whole school, which could be done on the current site if the modular classrooms remain for a few more years. Or, the new school could go on Moxley Field, and the baseball field would be constructed on the current school site.
Some of the visions for the new school showed a smaller footprint and more green space on the current middle school property.
The process for seeking designs will be much different than the most recent one that the School Building Committee went through with Watertown High School, said Christy Murphy, from Watertown’s project management firm, Vertex.
“The last feasibility study in memory, that was constrained by the MSBA process,” Murphy said. “We can design this feasibility process around a much more open approach, perhaps the first level being the sky is the limit, and one where they do it within out budget — they may land on (addition and renovation). They can give us a range from meeting our budget to ‘it doesn’t matter’ and we want lots of options. Just know you are not constrained and we can make that how you want it to be.”
School Building Committee member Kelly Kurlbaum asked if the budget won’t cover the cost, how long they would have to wait to do the project if they do not go ahead now.
City Manager George Proakis said the main reason the project is coming forward at this time is because the City has the opportunity to keep the modular classrooms set up as the temporary high school right next to the Middle School on Moxley Field, which would save millions.
“The short answer is about 10 years from now,” Proakis said, adding that there are other projects that need to be addressed in the near future, including doing the improvements to Watertown Square, the Senior Center, a Recreation facility, the East End Fire Station, and a staging area for Department of Public Works projects.
Ai3 received the highest ranking, two points ahead of HMFH, and four points ahead of William Rahn Associates, and 2o points ahead of Dore + Whittier. In terms of School Committee members’ top picks, Ai3 received five votes and HMFH received three.
Some members of the Committee said they have had some concerns with the number of changes that Ai3 had make from the approved design with the high school and the Lowell Elementary School projects, including Sideris.
“I am a little concerned with the way Ai3 has kind of dropped the ball on us lately on the high school. We have had a lot of change orders, and change orders coming, that were clearly design defects, I am going to call them,” Sideris said. “But there is something to be said for the dog you know and the dog you don’t.”
Superintendent Dede Galdston said looking at it from the educational perspective, she has been very pleased with what Ai3 has built at the other schools in town.
“I think that for me Ai3 has developed educationally exciting buildings. I can say every time I go into a building I hear from teachers and parents and kids — I was talking with students at Hosmer who could not say more about their building,” she said. “I think what they have done for us educationally has been very profound. I think the other thing is when went through the process of conceptual design for the three elementaries and the high school they listened to everything we said and gave us 10 options for the high school. When we talk about thoroughness, of overturning every stone and giving us options, they have shown they go as far as they can to get it to the place where we want to be.”
Council Vice President Vincent Piccirilli said that the middle school years are key ones, and sometimes parents pull their children out of districts and send them to private school because the middle school experience is not a good one for them. He added that he hopes that Ai3 provide top quality work.
“I am hoping that if we move forward with a contract with Ai3, we expect the A Team on this, this is going to be a priority,” Piccirilli said. “Part of the reason why we are going with Ai3 they don’t need to start from scratch with doing the community involvement, they know our schools better inside out, they know what our teacher want better than a lot of other people.”
Kurlbaum said she would like to see the middle school have a different design from the three new schools: the high school, and the Hosmer and Cunniff elementary schools.
“There are a lot of architects in town, including myself, that would like to see a little bit of a design aesthetic and maybe we can push them to do something a little different,” she said. “It may be nice to do something a little different.”
School Committee member Lindsay Mosca said Ai3 has a good working relationship and experience with folks in Watertown, which is key in a project that has a “fast on-ramp.”
The School Building Committee voted 9-0 to choose Ai3 Architects to do the feasibility study for Watertown Middle School. Murphy said the next step is to negotiate a contract with the firm. If an agreement cannot be reached, then Watertown will seek to negotiate a contract with the second ranked firm, and so on, she added.