School Building Committee reviews NACTEC redesign plan and raises budget questions ahead of March deadline

The School Building Committee on an evening meeting reviewed new redesign drawings and a compressed schedule tied to a March 1 deadline to get materials to the city council for consideration of whether to keep the NACTEC building. Committee members pressed project staff for clearer pricing and how any additional cost would be funded.

Project staff said only the electrical site drawings had been sent to vendors so far and that the electrical work to keep NACTEC would require a new feed and transformer across the field. Alita, who gave the construction update, said the electrical drawings were issued about two weeks prior and that the project team planned a meeting with the site contractor to start work that can proceed without the final “clouded” set of drawings. She said, “That piece is pending,” and that the team would push to get the clouded drawings finalized and sent to Gilbane by the end of the next day.

Committee discussion focused on timing and money. A school-committee representative told the SBC that the school committee has asked design teams (SLAM and Studio Jade) to rework utilities to retain the NACTEC building, and emphasized the need to get vendor pricing back so decisions can be made in time. The chair of the SBC summarized the committee’s request: the group wants to know estimated extra costs and contingencies before the council acts. The chair said, “we'd love to be able to say exactly how much this is gonna cost, but we don't know the cost.”

Members debated whether a $260,000 demolition set-aside could be reused to offset the premium of keeping the building. One committee member urged clarity about fund flows, asking whether the demolition contingency “should then go back into the fund for the overall construction” rather than toward maintaining the NACTEC building. Project staff explained that some offsets are treated as credits in the overall contract and that the final pricing and budget classification remain to be determined, and agreed to follow up with the owner’s project manager (Joe DeSanti) to provide detail.

The committee emphasized its informational role: final decisions about keeping the NACTEC building rest with the school committee, but SBC members requested regular updates on how keeping the building would affect the overall project budget and asked that the project team provide a clear breakdown of additional costs versus offsets.

Next steps: staff said they would finalize and issue the clouded drawings to Gilbane immediately, advance what can be priced without the full set, and return with pricing and a recommended path prior to the council deadline. The committee requested a focused update from the owner’s project manager at a future meeting on how SBC’s role and any funding decisions would be handled.