Northborough design subcommittee reviews Peaslee site constraints, modular swing space and sewer hookup

Erica Hall, facilitator of the Peaslee Building Committee’s design subcommittee, opened the April 24 kickoff meeting and led introductions before turning the presentation over to Flansburgh Architects and PMA Consultants.

Ken Kovacs of Flansburgh described site constraints around the existing Peaslee School, noting wetlands and a stream that limit buildable area and a 100-foot setback the team will avoid for building placement. “You have wetlands over to the east…there’s not a lot of buildable area in front of the school,” Kovacs said, summarizing the limits that shaped the options the consultant team has developed.

Kovacs told the committee the project team has met with the Department of Public Works and the local sewer commission and that the project appears “capable of connecting to town sewer,” which would remove the need to reinstall an on-site septic system and free up site logistics. He said DPW staff have agreed to support construction access across town property from the north, which would reduce disruption on Maple Street during construction.

The consultants walked members through three families of enrollment and program options (labeled A, B and C), explaining tradeoffs between renovating the existing 45,000-square-foot building and building additions or new construction. Kovacs said the MSBA requires the team to include a code-compliant ‘A’ option as a baseline, but that it does not meet the program needs for the district and would likely not qualify for MSBA reimbursement.

Because the existing building lacks sufficient internal swing space, the team said most retrofit or phased scenarios will require modular classroom packages during construction. “We’re looking at modulars probably in the ballpark of $4 million,” Kovacs said, describing typical packages of eight to 10 classrooms with toilets and a small administration area and noting that much of that cost is for site logistics and foundations rather than the units themselves.

Members asked about alternatives to modulars, including phased summer work and compartmentalized renovations. Kovacs and the project team cautioned that school projects typically lengthen if construction is paced around the academic calendar; the team estimated roughly an 18–20 month construction period for a vacated project and said efforts to phase the work around semesters or vacations often extend total duration and cost. The consultants also recommended construction-manager (CM) delivery for complex sequencing and early release of modular and site packages.

The group discussed technical details that will affect decisions: locating geothermal wells (the team estimated a preliminary concept of about 45 single-loop wells, ~500 feet each), routing utilities, and grading changes to accommodate loop roads and parking. Members raised environmental and neighborhood concerns including increases in impervious surface, the location of play areas relative to the town DPW yard (which can produce strong odors), and the visual impact of additional parking and loop roads; the team said mechanical design (air intakes, filtration) and civil strategies can mitigate some of the odor and stormwater issues.

Committee members also pressed on durability and cost of materials for a long-lived building. The design team urged prioritizing low-maintenance, 50-year materials (brick, metal roofs, tile or terrazzo in high-traffic areas) and said final material and massing decisions will come in schematic design, which is scheduled to begin in September once the MSBA has reviewed the June 25 submission.

On outreach and schedule, the team said it will finalize an evaluation matrix and option summaries for the full Peaslee Building Committee and that the communications subcommittee is organizing forums, focus groups and flyers ahead of a community forum and a short town-meeting presentation. The project team asked committee members to help publicize events and noted a video tour and interviews will be produced with Northborough Media.

Procedural items: committee members nominated and approved Kevin Virch as chair and Tristan Bezant as vice chair by roll call. No outside public comment was recorded. The subcommittee closed the meeting after the scheduled agenda items.

Next steps: the team will finalize the option evaluation materials requested by the full committee, complete additional site and utility coordination (including securing a DPW letter of support for sewer connection), and refine modular sizing and cost estimates; the MSBA package is due June 25 and schematic design is planned to begin in September if the MSBA supports the selected option.

Quotes in this story come directly from the April 24 design subcommittee meeting transcript and are attributed to the speakers who used the words.