Which plan do you prefer? More than a dozen Williamstown and Lanesborough volunteer citizens are holding public meetings and trying to figure out what to recommend on Thursday (July 30).
Thursday is the day the Mount Greylock Regional School District committee must make a decision whether to do (1) a partial renovation and new construction, (2) a major renovation with new construction, or (3) a total teardown and construction of a new high school on Cold Spring Road. Costs: Roughly between $52 million and $63 million -- with more than half covered by the state.
The reason for Thursday's date is because if a decision isn't made and forwarded to state school-building authorities, it will delay by at least three months any possibility of a green light for state funds for the project. The funds are vital to making the renovation affordable to local taxpayers.
At meetings last week, architect Daniel T. Colli, of Design Partnership of Cambridge ([email protected]) discussed three options (clicking on the highlight will open up a PDF view):
- The first renovation option would keep roughly half of the current classroom splace. Keeping the auditorium and gym core.
- The second renovation option would raze all current classrooms and add a two- or three-story all-classroom wing angled along the front of the current core buildings, preserving the auditorium and gym. This additional PDF view shows an option discussed last week to put a new cafeteria and media center area between the gym and auditorium, giving students a panoramic view of Mount Greylock, and moving adminstrative offices to the front of the gym.
- A third option - the most expensive -- would raze the current structure entirely and construct a new building behind the current one.
Stephen Dravis of iBerkshires covered last week's meetings and provided a detailed summary.
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