NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — The $65 million Greylock School project has moved into the detailed design phase after the successful debt exclusion vote earlier this month. 

"This is where we really start turning the work and developing the real life building," said Mayor Jennifer Macksey. "So from conception to reality." 

The School Building Committee on Tuesday voted to extend the contracts of Collier's International as owner's project manager and TSKP Studio as the designer. 

With funding secured, Superintendent Barbara Malkas said the next step is closing out the old school and preparing for demolition.

"Around this time next year, we will be deep into construction. In order to prepare for construction, we are looking to close out Greylock, the existing Greylock Elementary School," she said. "We've had an inventory completed of the items at the school, and currently, we are in the process of making sure that any of the items that still have an educational purpose can be picked up by educators."

Teachers have been notified of materials still in the school and times are scheduled for them or facilities to remove the items. Malkas said she has also notified local superintendents and educational leaders that the school will be open for them on Nov. 14 and 15 to peruse materials; a public tag sale will be held on Nov. 22-23 for any remaining items. 

The kitchen equipment has a higher valuable and will be sold through the city procurement process, she said. "The funding raised through the tag sale and through the procurement process for the kitchen items will go into a separate account and will be reserved for consideration of purchases later on, associated with the building project."

Costs for the feasibility module came in below the $1.1 million budget at $944,000. Timothy Alex of Collier's presented the timelines and budget schedules for the next two years that will be filled in as the project moves forward. 

The next year will be spent in narrowing the design and getting cost estimates with bidding expected late next summer and groundbreaking in the fall. The project is expected to be completed for the opening of the school year in 2027. 

Alix, in response to questions, said the Massachusetts School Building Authority has a streamlined system in which invoices are submitted, audited and then reimbursed to the allowable limits as the project moves forward.

"A lot of these different steps that we go through along the way are repeated in detail design, 60 percent design, and then the 90 percent design, until we get to the 'documents completed,'" he said. "Design is going to be from now and through that, we're anticipating documents completed in September of 2025 so big picture that kind of brings us through next summer."

Estimators will begin in initial work on the 60 percent design; these estimators are selected by the MSBA, not the city or its project manager.

Once completed, there's about a year of closeout in funding and punch lists before the commissioning agent signs off on the project. The Colegrove Park Elementary School closeout took nearly 18 months. 

Collier's contract is $1.7 million, including $224,500 incurred during feasibility; TSKP's extended contract is $4 million. Jesse Saylor of TSKP said the contract, including the feasibility portion, was 8.4 percent of the estimated construction cost. 

"If you compare it to the range that you see with MSBA projects, where we're below the average range, it's typically at 9 [percent] to 11 percent for designers," he said. "We've done our best to keep our team in line, or below, below the average, frankly, to help this project move forward, and also, because we have a good familiarity with elementary schools in the field, we can do it efficiently."

The committee also approved a total of $162,899 in other reimbursable services, including hazardous materials investigation of the old school, further geotechnical borings, property and noise surveys, and a geothermal test well by Cushin & Sons at $59,276.

Macksey said she was still nervous of the proposed geothermal heating and cooling system. The committee had voted against the system but it had been required by MCAS and is expected to be paid for through the federal Inflation Reduction Act. 

Saylor said he was "cautious" about the soils around the Greylock site because of experiences at Williams College. Back in February, a test well for the new Williams College Museum of Art collapsed because of unstable bedrock and plans for Cole Field were "complicated," according to the Williams Record. However, the college is successfully using 10 other wells.

"It really comes down to the fact that soils are variable in this area, and we can't really know and that's why we need to do a test well to understand the potential for the Greylock site to support geothermal," he said. 

Committee members asked what would happen if it was not possible to use geothermal; Saylor said they would need to communicate that back the MSBA. Alix said another community was allowed to go with a more traditional system after the community registered deep concern over the proximity of a well to its reservoir.  

"We were talking about being solar-ready but not doing solar immediately. Is that an opportunity for us to say, OK, those funds that we were going to pivot into geothermal, well we're going to pivot into solar now?" asked committee member Benjamin Lamb. "Just because we can go geothermal doesn't mean we can't go green."

Saylor said it was a possibility.

In other business, Malkas noted there had been a number of changes since School Building Committee was established in 2019 and it is now of need of new members.  

"We are looking for a another teacher member. We also have positions open for some community members, so if anybody knows anybody who would be interested in wanting to serve on the School Building Committee, this is a good time to consider recruitment and to give them my email," she said.