Lexington’s School Building Committee unanimously voted to move forward with the “Bloom” concept for the new Lexington High School during its meeting on Tuesday. The group also voted to add to and renovate the school’s field house.
“It’s not so complex a decision in my mind…the building conditions and overcrowding are not things that most of us would tolerate in our own work environments,” Kseniya Slavsky, SBC member, said during the committee’s Tuesday meeting. “On all objective metrics from cost to disruption, Bloom…is a more efficient, faster option and I just cannot justify spending more money to get a project that is longer and more disruptive.”
The construction of Bloom, with Lexington Public Schools’ central offices inside, plus changes to the field house, is estimated to cost about $662 million according to Oct. 15 cost estimates by SMMA, the architecture firm managing the project. Dore + Whittier, the Owner’s Project Manager, estimated that nearly $150 million of that price tag will be covered by state funding and federal rebates. Lexington will have saved about $40 million in its Capital Stabilization Fund which will help chip away at the estimated bill.
Assuming next year’s debt exclusion vote passes, it will take about 4.5 years to build Bloom. Students would continue to attend school in the current building while Bloom is being built.
Bloom imagines constructing a new building where the sports fields currently are on the property. By moving into the property and away from shady trees, the building can effectively accommodate solar panels. Bloom allows for optimal classroom layouts, improved adjacencies between departments, and flexible spaces that support innovative teaching and learning practices, according to the SBC’s position statement.
The SBC’s decision is consistent with what the majority of residents want — asked which design they prefer, 81 percent of the 348 Lexington residents who completed a survey that was introduced at the Oct. 30 community meeting preferred Bloom over “Weave” or other options. Likewise, LHS students prefer the chosen design.
“It has the least disruption to the students, that’s what we care about as the students going to the school,” Avia Liao, sophomore at Lexington High School and member of the Student School Building Committee, said during Tuesday’s SBC meeting. “We want to preserve the sense of normalcy when going to school and we feel that Bloom does that better.”
Olga Guttag, a Lexington resident and member of LHS4All, a group of residents who disapprove of the designs the SBC has explored, is opposed to pursuing Bloom. Guttag has told LexObserver her group thinks the plans the SBC has explored are unnecessarily expensive, aren’t environmentally-conscious to build, and don’t adequately consider the potential influx in students that the MBTA Communities Act could cause.
LHS4All supporters do, however, believe the town needs a new school. So they imagined their own based on SMMA’s 2015 master plan for Lexington’s public buildings.
“What we’re [not opposed to] is getting a high school of the right size and getting it priced in such a way that is more palatable for people,” Guttag has told LexObserver.
Peter Kelley, a Lexington resident and LHS4All supporter, will present a citizens petition during the Special Town Meeting on Nov. 13. In his article, Kelley urges the town to delay filing its plan for the LHS building project to the Massachusetts School Building Authority for state funding and spend time considering LHS4All’s plan for the building project instead of Bloom.
In addition to voting to move forward with Bloom, the SBC also voted unanimously in favor of adding to and renovating the field house. If the debt exclusion vote passes, the updated sports facility will boast a 200-meter four-lane oval track, bleachers to accommodate nearly 1,500 spectators, and space to fit four tennis courts on the track’s infield.
Now that the SBC has chosen which designs to move forward with, SMMA will create schematic designs of Bloom and the field house. Those designs will be much more detailed than the massing studies the SBC has been considering but still won’t be detailed enough to build off of.
“With Bloom we have the opportunity for a coherent layout…it can be better suited for occupancy safety concerns,” Himmel said during Tuesday’s meeting. “I think we’re better off starting ground up, we can be more resilient, more sustainable.”
Finally. It is the worst building of all high schools in the area. At least future students will have a decent school. Long over due.
I would like to hear about plans for the new and existing athletic fields. Will the new fields be turf? Will the town address the current drainage and safety issues for fields that will remain?
Everyone is acting that the design and therefore the cost is selected. This was simply an affinity selection based on a flawed set of alternatives. I do agree that building on the field is the least cost and fastest construction approach. However, the duration and cost of construction is twice as expensive and twice as long as constructions models and other similar schools in similar metropolitan areas. The insanity needs to stops and a budget needs to be set.
I prefer the Bloom concept as well from the options presented, but I think it should not include the Lexington Public Schools’ Central Offices. Solve the high school problem now, then the central offices problem at a later date … or possibly use the Bedford St. building that was the temp fire station and police station for the school central offices.