Doherty building committee

Note that this is one of two June meetings; the building committee will meet again on June 29 to vote on the schematic design, which is what was presented last night. It will then go to the Mass School Building Authority in August. 

The presentation is here. 

They were at pains to emphasize that this meeting is not, in any way, about Duffy Field. That is a separate process, a separate part of the DPW, and not related to the school building process. Once they start work on Duffy Field's plan, we were told that they'd be starting with public input.

They've had an arborist look at the health of the trees along the East-West trail, as well as those along the edge of the property. That's those big beeches that line Highland past the school heading to Park Avenue. Many are not in great health. The expressed hope is to save what trees are possible and there is planned landscaping. 
They also plan to rebuild the front wall (again; they just did that!) along that stretch of Highland.

They'll be adding a driveway directly across from Suburban Road for buses; that will bring buses along the back of the new building, up the hill, and around to the front for drop-off and pick-up. Passenger traffic will enter closer to where the current driveways are and go straight up to a parking lot at the front of the new building, between that and the new fields (which will be on the site of the current building). 

There were a series of slides describing construction process, which will look familiar to those who have been following projects like South: they'll fence off the construction area, build the new building, open the new building, fence off and demolish the old building, then build the new fields. The fencing off of the construction area will start at the end of next school year and be completed by the time school opens for fall of 2021, so construction can go on while school is in session. 

They also showed a series of slides of the building layout with plans for each floor (that starts on slide 16 in the presentation), and concludes with this overview:

The building sort of stair steps up the hill, with parking for faculty underneath the gym at the back. 

I was not able to stay for the Q&A portion; if I can watch it later, I'll come back to this with notes on that, as well.