Arlington High School Building Project

Sustainability is integral to the new high school design and over the past year, the AHS Building Committee has made substantial progress on identifying key sustainability features for inclusion. This supports the Town’s longstanding commitment to address environmental challenges and reduce energy use across all its facilities and operations. Aside from being the right thing to do, Arlington will receive …

John Cole is an AHS Building Committee member and an architect. He is also a former member of the Permanent Town Building Committee (PTBC). During his tenure on the PTBC, Mr. Cole was involved in every building project the town has undertaken over the past 20 years. At the April 29 Town Meeting, I offered this personal reflection as to …

At the direction of the AHS Building Committee, the Finance and Communications Subcommittees evaluated the cost of creating a working high school should Arlington vote against the debt exclusion. Because of significant enrollment growth and deteriorating facility conditions, doing nothing will not be an option; the needs are pressing and must be addressed in the next few years. This report …

Note: This blog provides an update to the previous benchmark analysis performed earlier in the project. Arlington, Belmont, Waltham, Saugus and Somerville are five high school building projects navigating through similar challenges — dense suburbs with comparably scaled projects being undertaken within the same timeframe. While there are similarities between the projects, none of these projects (or other projects in …

What is exciting about the design for the new high school? Ask Principal Matthew Janger, and he will tell you that he is excited by the way the design meets all the Guiding Principles that were set forth in the AHS Educational Program in the early stages of the building project. Dr. Janger says that, “This is a building that …

This blog gives a big picture view of what contributes to the overall cost of the new high school. There are three primary drivers that must be considered: High Schools are costly The Boston area construction market is expensive Arlington High School has specific factors that increase its cost above a typical high school building project High schools are expensive …

Throughout the project, the Building Committee has been mindful of the financial impact of the project on today’s taxpayers, while planning a school that will serve the town for the next century. The Committee has explored multiple ways to reduce the cost of the project, all resulting in a lower project cost to taxpayers. This blog summarizes these cost-cutting efforts. …

This blog answers questions that have come up recently regarding very preliminary project estimates for $150M that were included in the Request for Service (RFS) documents when the Building Committee was soliciting proposals for an Owner’s Project Manager and a Designer/Architect in 2016. . Budget development is an ongoing process through the Feasibility Study and Schematic Design phases of the …

As the project nears the end of the Schematic Design phase, the Building Committee has spent the past few weeks reviewing refined cost estimates and discussing adjustments to the project budget. At the February 5 meeting, the Building Committee voted unanimously on a proposed project budget of $291M, a $17M reduction from the preliminary estimate of $308M last summer. Read …