 I'm Michael Morris, Superintendent of the Amherst Public Schools, and thank you for viewing the latest edition of Window into Arps. For today's episode, we're going to be focusing on the Fort River Feasibility Study, and with me today are Jonathan Salvin, who's the Chair of the Fort River Feasibility Committee. So thank you for being here, Jonathan. And Richard Sipic, who is a partner at TKSP Studios, who has been partnering with the town to work on this feasibility project. So thank you both for being here. This is a topic of high interest in our community. So really, I look forward to hearing from both of you and sharing my own perspectives to really talk about the work that's happened, the work that will be continuing over the next couple of weeks, and how this informs the larger effort of the town to improve the education for our students. So before we get into more on the Fort River Feasibility Study specifically, I wonder if you could just share a little bit about yourselves, your background and how you got connected to this project. And I'm happy to start with you Jonathan. So as you said, I'm Jonathan Salvin. I'm the Chair at the moment. I'm also a Fort River parent. We have two boys in kindergarten, one in kindergarten, one in the third grade. And we've lived in the community for about 12 years now. And I am also an architect, like Richard, but I'm not the architect for the project. But I am a partner at Cune Rital Architects here in town. Great. Thank you. Well, my name is Richard Sivak and I'm a partner in TSKP Studio. And we have offices in Boston as well as in Hartford. Our firm is a regional firm. We've done educational work for a long time. Personally, I started my architectural career in 1974, having finished architecture school, which interestingly is around the time that Fort River was built. And so during my career, I've seen a lot of changes in school design and school construction, including retrofitting schools that are of the Fort River vintage. So I'm very familiar with the building. I'm very familiar with the process of school design and school construction. And I've been working with the Feasibility Committee now for several months and would be happy to share my thoughts with you on that project. Great. Thank you so much. So before we get to the neat diagrams that you brought to show the community, I think maybe just having some background information on the purpose of the committee and the work that's happened would be really helpful. So I wonder, Jonathan, if you could start a little bit with the purpose and then we can talk about the work that has occurred and then get to actually see the work that's occurred, which is of course high interest for our community. So our committee was created by town meeting in I think March of 2017. We've been meeting as a group since October of 2017. And before hiring Richard, we also went about doing some air quality testing. We've done site survey, we've done some geotechnical work or geotechnical testing. So we've done some work in addition to working with TSKP during that time. Great. And do you want to add some about the work since you've been on board? Sure. Well, we've been working now for several months and we don't work alone. We bring in the appropriate specialists and consultants that help us assess the existing physical conditions and then help us in projecting the possibilities, some options as well as cost. So working with us is limb consultants. They're structural experts. They've gone through the existing building. Kola Ronin, they're the mechanical electrical plumbing experts and they've gone through the building as well. Berkshire Design Group, local firm. They're experts in civil and landscape and they've gone through the building and the site and have done some assessment. In addition to that, the town has hired a surveyor to survey the site as well as a geotechnical engineer to do a geotechnical analysis of subsurface conditions. So all of those experts participate in writing a report which we're in the process now of compiling and delivering to the committee and we expect to have that done in March in this coming month. Our role as the committee will be to, obviously once everyone agrees that we're at the final stage is to then take that and present that to the school committee. At which point our committee kind of sunsets and we don't go beyond that. I did bring some slides which at the appropriate time would like to share some images from some of the study that we've done. If I went through all of the study details we'd be here for a long time but I just brought some sample images to share with you and the audience. Fantastic and we'll get there in a second. I think that I'm trying to wet the appetite perhaps of the viewer because I know those images may be more interesting looking at the three of us but I think it's also important to note as an ex-officio member to share the range of options. By range I'm talking about types of construction but also school size and maybe if you could describe a little bit of the varied approaches and the kind of range of data that we're collecting as part of this project it might inform the viewer and inform kind of the viewing of the slides. Well we looked at the base option which is basically just bringing the building up to code and not doing any improvements from an educational standpoint. And then we looked at completely replacing the existing building with new construction and we looked at a various range of additions and renovations perhaps some addition and some renovation to various degrees. So we actually studied quite a number of options including population options a smaller population to perhaps a K6 only perhaps a K6 with pre-K. And so we actually in our study you'll see went to the upper limit because you could easily scale back but if you look at the upper limit then you can kind of get a sense of what the possibilities might be. So I will share with you later the upper range which is 465 pupils that's 420 pupils in the K6 grades and then another 45 in the pre-K. And some of this was guided by trying to model the process that you would have to go through if it were in fact an MSBA, Massachusetts State Building Authority. Thank you, that's correct. Which we're not and we should be clear about that this was set up kind of between the Wildwood process and some future process but we wanted to model the work of the study with that in mind so that we're providing data that was of the same quality and the same breadth I guess I'd say. That's correct. We actually did talk with the committee about what do we use as the standard for planning. I mean there's different standards you can use in terms of square footage you know for population depending upon age range and what I think the consensus of the committee was well let's use the MSBA guidelines. Not that it's an MSBA project but just as a tool to compare square footage with what MSBA might view. Absolutely and stepping slightly out of the role of interviewer for a moment. I think one of the things that's important to note is what's incredibly beneficial from my perspective is that when the request was made for the feasibility study it's really to gather a significant amount of information that we didn't currently have at that time. So it was going to inform any future project that occurred and that was both about the site as you noted about the building, about options to address some of the deficiencies in the infrastructure and so what I'm incredibly appreciative of the work of the committee but also of your work and your team's work is we're collecting it's almost like a treasure trove of information that whatever future project the town ends up wanting to support to improve the education of our students we now have tremendous amount of data that was really just conjecture beforehand. Correct and I was asked by members of the public at a public meeting whether that they could extrapolate from the information in our report and then let's say you change the population or you change the square footage can you use this in a direct ratio? Well, not a direct ratio but because you have to actually delve into it a little bit but you can extract from it and then make a pretty intelligent guesstimate of different scenarios. Yes, so it's very useful. Absolutely and the site certainly which I know we'll speak to when we start looking at the slides is a question that many people have had so having the geotechnical work and the borings and all the work that you've done how would you address it and add the current structure and add a rental model just incredibly useful because I think it really gives us hard data by which in the future to make decisions on as a community and from my perspective as someone whose job is basically to advocate for students it makes it much easier to advocate once we have this hard concrete data to base our advocacy on. So why don't we get to slides? You know, so I think I'll turn it over to you Richard and I know for the viewers what Richard's describing will show up on the screen. Okay, I did print out a copy of the slides for my benefit so I may be referring to my paper here momentarily but I think if you refer to slide number two which highlights really the primary goals of the feasibility study which was to answer two questions primarily. The first question is, is the site buildable? Can you in fact build a building on the site? And the second question is, what are the options? If you were to build, how would you approach it? The answer to the first question I'll answer right now. Yes, the site is buildable. In fact you've had a building on it for many, many years so that alone is evidence that the site is buildable. We had raised questions early on about the nature of the subsurface conditions we could tell just looking at the mapping information that it's probably in a riverbed area. We knew historically that the site was probably farmland at one point. So we did have some concerns and that's why when the question of geotechnical exploration came up we encouraged that to occur because having done work in riverbed areas before all of Hartford for example is in a riverbed area building a one-story building is technically not difficult building a two-story building might be and you might have to build with piles in order to be able to create a solid foundation. Well I'm happy to report that based upon the geotechnical information that we don't need piles but we do need to repair the soil and that preparation might be basically stones stones placed within the excavated area in order to create a broad enough base that is stable to support a two-story building which wouldn't be a problem. So the answer to the question is it buildable? Yes it's buildable. There have been some questions raised about the high water table about the dampness in the existing building all of that is easy to solve in new construction it's done all the time. The existing building was not built with a vapor barrier and insulation under the existing slab so a lot of the dampness could be coming from the hydrostatic pressure that's from the high water table penetrating or perhaps just condensation that's occurring because the existing building is inadequately ventilated when you have humid air in the building that humid air when it reaches a colder area like the floor slab which is built right on the ground and it's not insulated you're going to get condensation occurring so that won't be a problem in new construction with adequate ventilation with proper vapor barrier separation and so on. So the answer to the first question is yes the site is buildable and it's buildable in a number of different locations adjacent to the existing building. The second question that was posed is what are the options and there are many options but the focus may be just on a handful of them. So if you go to page or if you go to slide number three which is an aerial photograph of the existing Fort River school you'll see that the white rectangular area is the roof of the existing building and you can see within that area there are a number of holes those holes are courtyards they're very small courtyards there are a total of seven small courtyards and I think to call them courtyards is kind of a generous term and there's one larger one which is near the cafeteria area but the smaller courtyards really are nothing more than light wells in an effort to create some daylight within the classrooms that are not on the perimeter of the building and consequently they don't have windows that are on the outside of the building have a view of the outside of the building so it was a small attempt to create that and they are woefully inadequate in my opinion but anyway the existing building is a one-story building it's built on a conventional spread footing and it has a north I should point out in this picture is to the left of the image so on the west side or just below that white rectangular area representing the building you'll see some parking area you'll see a bus drop off area on the right side of that rectangle you'll see playfields and playgrounds the existing building is 78,000 square feet which is not adequate for what you need to satisfy the building program that you're proposing that 465 pupil range by our estimate again using MSBA as a guide for square footage we believe you need to about 85,000 square feet properly partitioned with separate classrooms that don't have internal courtyards that have proper exterior windows that have proper acoustic separation 85,000 square feet so that's important to remember so why don't we talk about further answering the question about those options if you go to slide number four you'll see that there's a range of options illustrated in that slide everything from A through F this is only 6 out of 147 options that we looked at but they are pretty good sampling of the range of possibilities on the left you see building a new building that's option A 85,000 square feet or 100% new construction and on the right you see option F which is keeping only the existing 78,000 square feet building 0% new construction and then in between A and F you see various possibilities a two-story addition a one-story addition two small separate additions and then one small separate addition now if we go to the next slide slide number five this is a view an aerial view of one possibility it's a new two-story building built just to the south of the existing building and you'll see a lot of little rectangles little dark rectangles on top of that blue shape which represent photovoltaic panels I'll get into that in a moment but if you go to the next slide slide number six which is diagram that illustrates the existing footprint of the building existing building which is a one-story building you can see the little courtyards and then on the right of that is a two-story footprint of a new building in blue so you can see comparatively the existing versus new footprints and I placed the new building approximately where we could build the new building adjacent to the existing footprint so that's option A a completely new building now if you go to slide number seven you'll see a site plan that illustrates that same footprint in orange and that has these pink rectangles on the roof that represent solar panels actually you'll see a lot of pink rectangles on that site plan they all represent potential photovoltaic systems so let's back up a minute one of the things that we're aware of is a bylaw in the town pertaining to net zero construction that bylaw says that for new construction you need to build a building that is net zero in other words you're not having to buy energy you are generating energy on the site so that you don't have to buy any how do you do that? well you can do it through wind turbines if you're near the shore you can use tidal and waves to generate electricity but neither of which are practical for this site the only onsite generation of power electricity is through photovoltaics so how many photovoltaic panels do you need to generate net zero energy building use? what you see here is approximately $6.4 million worth of photovoltaic panels which you would need to place on the site in order to meet the net zero requirement provided that you are achieving an energy use intensity of 50 so people who study energy use in buildings measure energy in terms of energy use intensity just to put this in perspective the typical building today is about an energy use intensity of about 100 you can easily achieve an energy use intensity of 50 which means you're using less electricity less gas or oil for heating you're using less for ventilation because you're making a tighter building for example and that's what you would have to do anyway to achieve compliance with energy codes as you know so to achieve an energy use intensity of 50 you need approximately $6.4 million with photovoltaic panels on the roof and the site and the site that's correct that's a good point Jonathan it's not only photovoltaic panels on the building roof but it's also on the site as well whether it's out in the field or whether it's over parking stalls in the parking lot there's another strategy you can take once you reduce the energy use intensity if you go to slide number 8 you can see much fewer photovoltaic panels on the site now it's only on the building and on the parking areas over parking stalls and how do you achieve that? well you reduce the energy use intensity of the building down to 30 and how you do that is by increasing the insulation in the building perhaps going to triple glazing perhaps only using a portion of the building during the summertime that's how you achieve it you also could use techniques like automatically turning off power outlets because power outlets drain energy even though you may have turned off your computer if you leave something plugged in it still is draining power and so if you have a method of turning off electricity to those outlets automatically you can reduce your energy use intensity so this illustration on this slide shows fewer photovoltaic panels in fact you reduce your photovoltaic cost to 3.8 million however you do need to do other kinds of energy systems mechanical systems like you might use geothermal you might have geothermal wells for example on the site so we would budget another 1.4 million for that and then you would have to improve your envelope of the building, your roof and the walls and the windows so that premium would be an additional 2.5 so the total premium to achieve net zero in this scenario would be 7.7 million does that make sense? it does, yeah, no absolutely so we have about 5 minutes left of film time so I think it's an important point I'm glad you raised the net zero because there's certainly a lot of questions in our community around that since it's a new bylaw and there hasn't been a project that has been built since that bylaw or design since that bylaw has been passed this is really helpful for the community to see that I wonder if we could transition to some of the add reno why don't we jump to slide number 17 which illustrates the same range of options A through F but you'll see in the chart there we've added duration of construction because depending upon whether you build new completely new whether you're renovating and adding on will change the duration of construction if you change the duration of construction that adds cost to things like general conditions things like trailers on the site superintendent time, insurance duration so you can see here in option A which is the 100% new option that is the shortest duration of construction only 22 months of construction and you can occupy the existing building without disruption during that period and the longest is options D and E because renovation work is going to be complicated you're going to have to vacate a portion of the building or consolidate activities in the certain portion of the building while you're grabbing that portion and doing selective demo and selective renovation in that and then you're hopscotching around the existing building in order to achieve full renovation that's anticipated to be 36 months of construction and I should point out in option E which has the smallest addition probably will need some swing space some portable space not classrooms necessarily but perhaps for admin areas or other kinds of support spaces in order to create the swing space that you need to vacate portions of the building as you renovate so this diagram illustrates the range of construction duration the last slide I want to share with you is slide 18 which shows the range of costs for these options so you have $63.3 million for option A down to option F which is $28.3 million but option F doesn't address the educational requirements there's no addition and you still will end up with open classrooms with courtyards for token day lighting quite frankly I also want to point out that these costs represent total project costs now when you talk to people about construction projects and costs very often you're getting apples and oranges and trying to compare them I want to make sure you understand that this includes all construction costs or renovation costs if applicable it includes all engineering soft costs includes furniture and equipment it includes abatement and demo as appropriate and it includes furniture and equipment and contingency so that's all in thank you and I think for the viewers who are seeing these images this is really the data that was asked for and was requested and will be incredibly useful as the town figures out its next steps in terms of MSBA and what it chooses to do moving forward so it's incredibly helpful I like that you started with the two questions of is the site buildable and what are the options and that's really the core questions that we had on the front end and the fact that we're coming out with clear answers and information to inform the town's next steps is just incredibly useful incredibly important and I'll just speak for myself as someone whose job it is to advocate for students it's really exciting to think about what possibilities may be out there now that we have this information hopefully it really contributes to the community moving forward in the way it chooses to move forward to improve the condition of the building I also want to note that I appreciate the process of the committee and then the consultants have really identified what I think was discussed loosely about the challenges at Fort River and put a very scientific technical point to it it's very very helpful to have that perspective to better understand the current conditions of the site in the building Members of the committee have been great by the way they read everything that we write they question everything we write and just a day or so ago we received a group of questions from Jonathan saying that oh you need to answer these additional questions so again that's part of the process and we intend to finish up the coming month in March and this information will become available through the committee I imagine we do need to close the show but thank you both for your spending time here sharing with the community the perspectives on the work of the feasibility committee and also the detailed images and the work of your firm so thank you very much and we'll be back again soon with the next episode of Windward to Arps, thank you