Middle School Renovation Project Officially Underway

The middle school renovation project is officially underway.

It will still be 18 months before a shovel hits the ground, but members of the Town Council appointed Middle School Building Committee got the ball rolling Wednesday night at , approving motions to send out requests for proposals to hire a construction manager and architect to begin design work for renovations to the and .

The seven-member committee will spend the next several years monitoring the renovation project and working alongside the construction manager to assure the project is completed on budget and on schedule, and Committee Chairman Edward Pocock II said he is looking forward to the challenge.

“This committee is a team and we have a lot of experience with the group we have here,” said Pocock, who also serves on the Board of Finance. “Mike (Fortier) and Melissa (Sheffy) bring a lot of experience in the industry, Brian (Goralski) and Colleen (Clark) have assisted with past school projects and Chris (Palmieri) works directly in the schools. There’s a lot of work to be done, but I’m excited to see it get underway.”

The town voted by nearly to approve an $85 million referendum for the project, which will include renovating-as-new the town’s two middle schools. The project will bring technology at the school up-to-date and increasing school size by 32,500 feet at each school. Under the project, each school would also be able to .

Wednesday’s meeting was the first step in getting the ball rolling said Fred Cox, operations director for Southington schools, but the first stage is planning and administrative work and the first shovel is not likely to hit the ground until June 2013.

Cox said that under the proposed timeline, the project would be completed in August 2015. For the next year, however, the committee will need to focus on getting the right architecture firms in place and submitting a plan to the state’s Bureau of School Facilities by the end of the year.

If all goes according to plan, the committee will be able to hire a contractor to do the work in spring 2013 and begin work almost immediately.

Due to concerns after issues with previous projects, the committee decided Wednesday to hire one construction manager and one architecture firm to complete designs. The firm would be responsible for designing both schools and the initial designs, which were completed by Fletcher Thompson, may change but the goal remains to maintain a similar look at each school, committee members said.

Brian Goralski, committee member and chairman of the Board of Education, said the town could find a savings in having just one architect instead of two as the town used when renovations were made at the and in building the new .

The current schedule will also expedite the process in an effort to save additional money.

“This is something we’ve been working on, really, for about 12 years now. This is the third and final phase of a project to revamp all our communities schools and it’s great to see it finally coming to fruition,” Goralski said.

See a full timeline of the projected schedule in the PDF above or by .