Special Board of Aldermen 03-21-2022 Page 3
So through this process and into the fall, the Joint Special School Building Committee was handed off the project by
the Board of Education and approved Harriman as the architect and Harvey Construction as the Construction
Manager. More recently, we’ve hired the Engineering Corporation as our consultant for traffic analysis and SLR
International as the GeoTech. We talked a little bit more about why we had to hire those two. We have other
consultants that we have to hire as time goes on.
Some things I’d hope to accomplish this summer with the bonded funds are install those two egress stairwells, replace
bathroom fixtures, and install ADA compliant bathrooms. So we have some individual one seater bathrooms in the
facility, but they’re not ADA compliant. For example, you go in there with wheelchair now and you don’t have the
swing space you need for the door. You have to have that if you’re in a wheelchair for ADA compliance. Stair railings
- particularly for the little kids are just too high. If you are going to the building, you'll see that. The handicap ramp |
talked about. Having been there now for a little over a half year, we’ve seen Some minor changes we want to make.
Dumpster enclosure, the high school program has been asking for an exterior basketball half court and we'd like to
accomplish that and then some site work. I'll talk about the traffic congestion here shortly.
So this slides just summarizes real quickly the cost - how we came up with close to $5 million in the bond request.
We've got pretty good numbers from Harvey Construction on the actual construction costs. We do have proposals
from the architect for their fees, consultants — I’ve named two of them for you before and there are four others that |
still need to hire. Effefanies, furniture, fixtures and equipment in many cases for Preschool we’re bringing their
furniture with them but there are other things we'll have to purchase to outfit the school. Any project | have particularly
relates to construction, | have contingency for and the architect also needs a contingency because they can’t foresee
every single thing, particular those hidden gremlins that are behind walls, site modifications, and then some IT security
issues that we're budgeting a little bit for and Alderman Dowd thought we should round it up to a nice even $5 million
dollars.
So Franklin Street, if you’re not familiar with it, on this slide we are looking at the east side and the west sides of the
school. These are where the emergency stairwells will be installed on the left hand side that’s the east; the stairwell
will almost right at the corner of that building. We've already made the provisions inside the third floor for a hallway to
meet up with that and then on the west side it’s going to be pretty much just to left of that small door that you see on
the first floor, the ground floor.
Just looking at it from the top of the schematic drawings from the architect, those were two egress stairwells would go
- left and right and they’re also showing the handicap ramp on the front of the school. So the way we’ve been able to
get through the ADA issues this year so far is the back entrance has handicap access. Talking to the school Principal
and the teachers, they'd still like to have the handicap ramp in the very front as well.
Just threw this in. It just shows the egress stairwells from the side — what they look like. We might want to consider
covering them but this doesn’t show that. So for icy, snowy weather, it’s something you probably want to consider.
So we'll start showing you several conditions around the site and that goes back to my discussion. Stairwell
modifications - these are the existing handrails that were built for hign school age students. So you can imagine a 4
or 5 year old can’t reach up there. So we have to provide lower rails. Restroom upgrades — | went into the first floor
this past week and looked in the same bathroom. They brought in little stools for the kids to stand on so they get to
the sink to wash their hands. You got sinks that are lower and we need to install those. The same thing with the
toilets. You can buy toilets that are suitable for little fannies so sit down and not have jump up to do what they do. So
we'd take care of all that.
This is the current dumpster. We originally had it on Winter Street (I'll talk about the streets in a second). That was
very congested. We worked with solid waste on the best place to put the dumpster short term and long term. So this
is on the west side of the building and that is where it is. That’s probably where it’s going to end up, but we want to
put a dumpster pad in there and have it fully enclosed with fencing as it should be particularly on a highly traveled
public street.
This gives you a better idea of the site itself. Where the white cursor points in the picture, that’s Winter Street. So the
building directly below it is 55 Franklin Street and that is our building. To the bottom of that is Franklin Street, to the
left is Charles, and to the right is Locust Street. Franklin Street to Charles Street is a major thoroughfare. To the
right, it goes to Main Street and to the left, it goes up to Amherst Street - also is major access to the neighborhood
which is off to the left. So an awful lot of traffic goes through there. It’s very narrow especially on Franklin Street
directly in front of the school and currently that is where we do our drop-offs and pick-ups. I’m looking for the right
word - tenuous, exciting, dangerous because you have people lined up there. You have parents dropping off their
kids. They can pull all the way over and open up their doors and other traffic is trying to get past them, so it’s nota
