Special Board of Aldermen Public Hearing — 12/16/2019 Page 15
While Pennichuck and Fairgrounds have a compliment of recreation and athletic fields, the Elm Street location
does not have outdoor recreation spaces on the school site. We looked at, in addition to those programs, we
looked at what we call “core spaces” those ones that serve all students so that is the library and the cafeteria
and thinking about the sizes of those to support an increase at both Pennichuck and Fairgrounds and also
thinking about an 800 student model at Elm Street or a new school.
Lastly in addition to thinking about the schools themselves, we also took comprehensive review of the site and
in particular some aspects of the sites of the 3 different locations and that had to do with traffic flow through the
site; safety with pedestrian crossing; traffic routes; the ingress and the egress from the sites themselves and in
general the different site amenities; parking, and storm water treatment on the sites themselves. So that ina
nutshell in sort of the scope of our study. The results of that Jaime is going to walk us through the different
concepts at Pennichuck and Fairgrounds and a new school proposal. So Jaime?
Jaime
Thank you, again this Jaime Ouellette with Harriman. So | will kind of walk through each school and start off
with the site of each school and then move into the building itself.
At Fairgrounds Middle School, the site concept design incorporates a multitude of different items. The
perimeter security drive will be upgraded, there is additional parking added to the southside; reconfigured drop
off and entry, expanded bus loop, on-street queuing lane; and reconfigured parking at the entry lot. As you
move into the building, we are looking to add a new admin and secure entrance to the building, upgrades to
the unified arts spaces, science room upgrades, team collaborative instructive spaces, gymnasium upgrades,
upgrades to the special education rooms and some limited system upgrades which includes electrical,
mechanical, and their fire alarm systems.
Over at Pennichuck Middle School, we are looking to remove the portable classrooms. In order to do that there
has to be some additions to the buildings which are noted there in “B” so there is not only those “B” additions
account for the removed portable classrooms, but it also has to account for the additional capacity to equal
these out at 800 students per school, give or take, plus or minus. Reconfigured parking, new bus drop off, new
parent drop off, traffic signal at Manchester and Ferry Road, additional entry location for the busses which is
also emergency access drive, separation at the median at the entry so that the ingoing and outgoing are
separated, the traffic coming in there. The right and left exit lanes into the site and out of the site, entry turning
lane onto Manchester and improved pedestrian crossing at the crosswalk. So that whole intersection that
enters the building enters the site is getting upgrades to help with traffic and congestion that exists there. As
we move into the building, you can see “A” signifies those classroom additions that replaced the portables and
allow for increased capacity. “B” signifies a library addition, “C” upgrades to the unified art spaces, there are
science room upgrades, again those team collaborative instructive spaces, some gymnasium upgrades with a
stage addition, upgrades to special education rooms, and a cafeteria expansion to account for the additional
capacity at the school.
The new site location is located in the southwest quadrant of the City, you can see it very faintly in the bottom
left picture all the way at the bottom is kind of a light green, | think it says “N” for new school. And then if you
move to the upper right photo, you can see how that transposes on to the existing site. It is off from
Cherrywood Drive to the right and BuckMeadow off to the left. The other street indicated up in that kind of
upper left quadrant of that right photo is Main Dunstable. So it is a 20 acre site development. There are on-
site parking spaces, recreational play fields and courts. There is a natural preservation area, connection to
existing trail networks, there’s an access drive from BuckMeadow, an emergency access drive from
Cherrywood. Water and sewer that come from Cherrywood, new upgraded power from BuckMeadow.
There’s a sidewalk to the site from BuckMeadow, there’s dedicated service in emergency drive as well as
dedicated safe sped play areas.
The building consists of four levels. The first floor level is the mass of the school and there is a ground level on
the lower side of the building. If you took that piece that says “ground level” you slid it right under the spot right
next to it, that would be where that was located.
