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Council tells designers to preserve choral program and auditorium seating while pursuing other savings
Summary
After reviewing value‑engineering options, the school building committee and council expressed consensus to preserve the choral room and retain auditorium seat count, ask designers to pursue other cost‑containment measures (classroom footprint tweaks, facade/material changes, stormwater approach), and return with revised numbers.
The project’s building committee urged the town to protect critical program spaces while the design team pursues alternative cost reductions.
Designers presented a menu of value‑engineering options intended to reduce an unresolved construction gap, including switching underground storm detention to planted depressions to save costs, deleting the walking track above the gym, removing or reducing the auditorium balcony, deleting the choral room, and tightening classroom footprints. The team estimated savings ranging from hundreds of thousands to more than $1 million depending on choices.
School committee members and councilors pushed back on proposals that would remove essential program spaces. Members described the choral room as ‘‘essential’’ for music, piano and chorus instruction used eight periods a day and said shrinking auditorium seating would undermine community use and program capacity. After discussion the council gave clear direction to keep the choral room and preserve the auditorium seat count; designers were instructed to look for efficiency savings behind and supporting the seats rather than reduce the total number of seats.
Design team noted some options remain viable: removing a second‑floor walking track could reduce complexity and behavioral concerns, trimming classroom dimensions by one foot in the educational core could save roughly $267,000, and exterior redesign (reduce glazing, increase brick veneer, remove metal panels) could target roughly $1,000,000 in savings while remaining visually similar to community inspiration images.
The council emphasized tradeoffs: some items can be added later with contingency while others, such as the balcony and choral room, are hard to restore once deleted. The design team said they will re‑run the VE numbers with the committee’s directions and present updated savings and the remaining cost gap in the next meeting.
The meeting did not vote on any specific VE deletions; instead, members articulated a majority preference to preserve program spaces and directed staff to return with refined estimates.
