First phase of $20.46 million building project design shown to local educators

by Dan McClelland

Representatives from the school district’s architectural firm presented schematic drawings of the improvements in the district’s now voter-approved 20.46 million building project to the board of education at its January 8th monthly meeting.

Representing CSArch that evening were Dan Woodside, president of the firm and Kyle Smith. With them was Tupper Lake’s Chris Brunette, who is with Eric Robert’s Schoolhouse Construction, which will oversee the construction.

Also with the architectural firm was Carol Pratt, a building designer, who had been touring the school buildings that day.

“Our team has been busy since this community passed the vote last fall, working through our various design phases” Mr. Woodside began.

“As we talked pre-referendum, 90% of the design still comes after the vote.

“So we are currently in the first phase of our three-phase design work.” He said that evening’s presentation of the schematic designs was the first.

“Following that will be design development, where we will continue to refine the designs and then we’ll get into the construction document phase, as we get ready to submit the entire package and scope to the State Education Department for building permit review and approval.

That step precedes the start of construction, he noted.

“Along the way we’ll be working with Chris and his team at Schoolhouse Construction, which will be involved in estimating and gearing up for how the project will unfold, in terms of the phasing of it,” Mr. Woodside told the elected officials that evening.

He turned the presentation over to Kyle Smith, who said what his firm was tasked with in this first phase of the design, had a deadline of December 21. That work was highlighted in the presentation that evening.

Full details of that work were distributed in a lengthy report shared with the school officials that evening. Electronic copies are available to the public through the district office, he noted.

Mr. Smith said the schematic design report- the first 30% of his firm’s work for the district- featured “a lot of information gathering, verifying the project’s scope, and having programming meetings.

He took the board through a handful of slides of the various components of the project, with color photos and graphics and bullet points of the work planned.

The scope of work at the middle/high school building involves new exterior steps and railings, both at the two main entrances on Chaney Ave. and one entrance in the rear of the building. Also in the plans for that building are new roofs for the Baker Wing and locker room, replacing both large sections of the building roofs entirely.

All exterior doors will be replaced, adding “card-reader” access devices. Many of the windows in the building will be upgraded as well, he explained.

All the bathrooms in the Baker Wing will be renovating and made handicapped compliant, according to Mr. Smith. Design work for that portion of the project has already been finished, he noted.

Other pieces of the middle/high school improvement work will be the repair of interior stair landings, stair treads and risers, replacement of air handling units in both the auditorium and gym, the replacement of all pneumatic controls with DDC controls in the new systems to be installed, the replacement of all the 1954 vintage copper piping in the entire building, the complete replacement of the building’s electrical panels and switchboard systems and the replacement of the building’s generator and exhaust system.

His slide showed a mock-up of what is planned in the Baker Wing bathrooms, the exterior windows and doors to be installed and the switchboard apparatus.

“We work closely with Schoolhouse Construction in identifying” what he called “long-lead items.” Those hard-to-get items are part of a list the company is compiling to submit an advance request report to state education so they can be delivered in time for the construction period, Mr. Smith explained.

“What we don’t want to do is wait and submit all the plans as one package and then end up waiting a year and a half for some” of the pieces of equipment to arrive.

Some of those pieces of equipment include some of the transformers and such that the village electric department will have to install around the high school to accommodate the new service panels going into the building. At recent village board meetings Electric Superintendent Mike Dominie has alerted officials of major supply chain delays and that some of his equipment like transformers have a delivery waiting time of more than a year right now.

Mr. Smith said in the back of the middle/high school building in the parking lots where the buses park, it will perform “full replacement right down to sub base” because of water issues undermining that area over the years. Underground storm water piping installed there is now part of the new plan, with connections to other storm water piping on the site, he told the board.

“There’ll be heavy paving in that bus parking area, but the front driveway loop will be an asphalt melt-down” of the binder course, and then resurfacing.

Both sections will meet DOT standards for bus traffic and parking, he assured the elected leaders.

Also on site he said some of the sidewalks will be moved or replaced to address draining issues and deterioration.

In the bus garage, an oil-water separator device will be installed. A large diesel fuel underground tank near the bus garage will also be removed. Also planned is a new building exhaust system with gas detection.

The middle/high school work is priced at $7.1 million and the bus garage work at $288,757.

Secure vestibules are planned at the entrances to both schools here.

“In order to provide a secure vestibule at the entrance of the middle/high school, one of the exits had to be removed. In order to provide a new entrance there for students and faculty we provided one out front”- and that changed since the last time you saw these plans, he told the board.

“What we came back with is that we can remove about 15% of the addition, allowing the doors to come out on the side underneath your existing roof canopy. It also allows for the egress window on the classroom above the entrance to remain- at that’s required by code!”

“This solved a number of issues including lowering the cost and permitted the egress window at top to stay!”

To accomplish that, the slides show, involved the creation of a new stairway addition which will attach to the roof canopy over the gym entrance.

The secure entrance area would be moved to the south end of the building, adjacent to the gym, versus the other end of the building where the entrance currently is.

He said currently visitors to the high school go to the main door, they are buzzed in by someone in the main office, and they enter the school and hopefully go to the main office where they would be greeted.

“Obviously there’s no control of those visitors,” however, under the current arrangement.

“The goal here is to provide a brand new secure vestibule where there would be an intercom, a card reader and ADA push button. Visitors will go into that secure vestibule where all doors are locked. They would ten meet and be greeted by school staff at the transaction window. Ninety percent of the people who go in there would pass their ID into the tray, they would have a conversation such as my son or daughter left their lunch or their violin and then they would leave the building. The other ten percent of the people with business in the building would be permitted in and go first to the main office.”

He said this type of new arrangement is what is being done in all schools in this state.

Mr. Smith said his team has met with Principal Amanda Zullo twice in past months to get her views on what is being proposed at the middle/senior high school.

The new layout for the office portion of the MH building includes two guidance offices, the principal’s office, vice principal’s office, a new school resource officer office, a mail room, a break room and a conference room, plus bathrooms- one for students, another for faculty.

He said the rooms lay-out is not yet final, so input is welcome at this point. Storage needs in each office remains under study, he added. “As a team, we need to do some more work on storage areas there.”

At the L.P. Quinn Elementary School there are two front roof canopies that are rusting, so new soffits will be installed. Some masonry will be repointed above the existing gym wall, he stated. “There’s some leaking there, and we plan to investigate that more to find out where the water is getting in, before any repointing.”

The entire flat roof on the school building will be replaced, as will a boiler exhaust “which is breeching.

Other work planned there include the replacement of all exterior windows and doors, and the replacement of interior door hardware, the creation of a secure vestibule in the entrance area and renovation of the main office, a dedicated ventilation system in the existing nurse’s office, replacement of unit ventilators in the second and third grade classes, replacement of the main copper piping and domestic copper pipes in the building and the replacement of the oil tank.

He said a roofing contractor was recently hired by Schoolhouse Construction to determine the moisture content of the roof, and it found that 90% of the roof under the membrane is dry. A second test in the spring is planned and depending on what is found, it would give the district the option of only replacing the membrane, and not the underlying sheathing, which would be less expensive and would give the district some flexibility in the event some other part of the project ran into extra unforeseen costs, according to Mr. Smith. The work at L.P. Quinn, including many improvements to the Rotary Track and Field complex is expected to cost $8.1 million.

The work at the athletic field includes the full replacement of the asphalt track and possibly the addition of a pole vault area and a steeple chase site, including a water hurdle, based on forthcoming research by Schoolhouse Construction, he said.

“One of the reasons to include areas for those other events,” said Mr. Woodside, would be to accommodate some type of regional track and field event, should you want to host something like that in the future. It was noted that steeple chase events are featured at most regional or section track and field events.

The metal bleachers will be relocated to the opposite side of the field. A brand new bleacher system and new press box would be built where the old ones were on the north side of the complex.

In the expanded secure vestibule section planned at the elementary school the entrance of the library would be moved out of the secure area.

Work planned at the Tupper Lake Civic Center with a price tag of just over $500,000 involves upgrading the artificial ice-making system with a new dehumidification unit, modifying the duct work to accommodate all improvements, provide 120-ton water cooled condensing unit and controls, replacing the existing steel brine tank with a new polypropylene one, and if the budget allows, to replace the evaporator/chiller unit that is at the end of its expected life and the brine material itself.