File this under sometimes government does learn from its mistakes…
From Wicked Local…
The Massachusetts School Building Authority Designer Selection Panel met last week to review five applicants interested in designing thenew or renovated Angier Elementary School.
The panel, made up of 13 State-appointed officials and three local Newton members, voted unanimously to invite DiNisco Design Partnership and HMFH Architects to interview for the project.
Thank goodness!
The MSBA is running a designer selection process that impresses me as a fair, thorough, and qualifications-based. It attracted five experienced and able firms to present applications, and the two firms receiving the highest marks in a public evaluation process were invited for interviews.
The fact that our designer will be selected by the MSBA and not by Newton’s own Designer Selection Panel is one of the “strings” attached to MSBA money. Newton does have three seats on the MSBA panel, but unlike the NNHS project, the designer selection decision is not ours alone.
So Newton gets credit for providing fodder for the STATE to change it’s approach?
Making Graham Gund the scapegoat does nothing to advance the discussion. The Gund-designed NNHS is an attractive building that is expensive, in large part, because of the way that it is massed and set. The massing and the setting were responses to the design brief, which was far too concerned with minimizing impacts on the neighbors and not enough on economy or engaging the street or the nearby village center.
An architect is only as good as his client(s). The city got what the city wanted.
Sean-the story is a lot more complicated than that. Let’s be very clear, the Mayor got what the Mayor wanted. The neighbors were treated like annoying mosquitos on a summer night.
That being said, if the MSBA has made changes to improve the process, then that’s great for Newton and students throughout the state
Sean – the problem wasn’t necessarily Mr. Gund per se. It was using a firm that didn’t specialize in schools. There’s a lot of savings in using a firm that doesn’t have to reinvent the wheel and therefore can do the design more quickly, plus you don’t need to pay the hourly rate of a big-name architect.
Jane and MGWA,
Gonna have to respectfully disagree. The expense of the building is not in the architect’s fees. They may have been higher than others (though I’m not sure they were paid hourly), but they weren’t a big driver. As others, particularly the Sangiolos, have explained, the big cost drivers were single-loaded corridors, the zig-zaggy floor plan, and some materials. Nobody is complaining about how it functions as an educational facility (which you would expect if the firm’s inexperience in school design was an issue).
The zig-zaggy design, as I understand it, minimizes the impact on any of the surrounding neighbors. It sets the building back from the street. It’s terrible urban planning, and it costs more than a more straightforward rectilinear school. Single-loaded corridors are inefficient for the obvious reasons. We built a wall for each classroom and each corridor, instead of walls for just the classrooms (with the shared corridor in-between).
As for the materials, I’ve got no big beef. It’s a civic building. We shouldn’t make it look cheap.
As for doing the design quickly, keep in mind that the building as built is very nearly identical to the initial submission. They should have reworked the design.
Sean says:
This is a myth. As you can see from the School Map available on the NNHS website, each wing of the building contains classrooms on either side of a “shared corridor in-between.”
Main Street on the first floor of the building is a central corridor as well, except where it extends through the voc-tech wing of the building, where the largest classroom spaces are.
Have you ever actually toured the school? I would be happy to show you around.
Color me corrected. Hmm.
Okay, no single-loaded corridors. But, man is that ziggity-zaggity. (And, it still irks me to no end that people walking, biking, or driving from Newtonville first see a parking lot and a huge windowless wall.)
The problem was not Gund per say. But the selection of Gund was emblematic of tragic mistakes of that era.
When David Cohen (not the committee, David Cohen) selected Gund in 2005 to design the new school, the only school Gund’s firm had ever designed was for the Walt Disney Company.
As Dan Atkinson reminds us in his excellent recap of the project…
Later when opponents managed to put Gund’s design on the ballot, Cohen mislead voters about the cost of the project, saying he could build Gund’s building for less than Gund said he could build it. We all know how that worked out.
Does anyone know why the Model School Program isn’t being used? My understanding is that using one of the model designs saves time & money.
@Greg, there were a lot of issues with the process. The decision to replicate the program definitely increased the cost. So did the decision to build a new school on the site while there were students in the existing school instead of vacating the existing building and using swing space during demolition and construction. And so did the decision not to have a central sports facility that both high schools and the public could use that could have included an indoor pool, multi-use playing fields, maybe even an ice rink. And I could go on and on with the decisions made over the span of almost 40 years that increased the cost to replace NNHS. The decision to rebuild rather than renovate is still controversial in some quarters, but I would ask every parent to answer honestly whether they would want their child to go to school in a building with poor ventilation and few windows that contains asbestos while it is being renovated. I surely didn’t.
By the way, Needham is facing related competing issues with its elementary schools. There is a playing field (Cricket Field) that the School Committee would like to use for a new elementary school which would be a lot cheaper to build a school on than renovating or demolishing an existing building and moving students to swing space during construction. The parks & recreation department and many residents are dead set against it because it is used by many of the youth leagues which have invested a lot of money in maintaining and improving the fields. It would also put two elementary schools very close to each other (where have I heard that before, [*cough* Brown/Oak Hill]?). So the town faces a difficult choice of losing playgrounds and parks or spending singificantly more to replace its elementary schools.
@Sean, part of the reason for the zigs and zags was a challenging site. There is a culvert along Walnut where the Laundry Brook goes that we didn’t want to build a bulding on top of. There is also an almost 30 foot difference in elevation from the north to the south side of the site. Then there is the ledge. There was also the buried asbestos, which, as it turns out, we ended up unearthing and having to dispose of anyway at a cost of millions of dollars. There were also concerns that Elm Road residents would live virtually in darkness most of the year if the building were located on Elm Road. There was also the need to get natural light and air into every classroom, a lesson learned from the old dungeon like monstrosity on Lowell Avenue which contained many internal classrooms without windows or adequate ventilation. And, yes, none of the neighbors wanted to have a huge building with 2000 teenagers too close to their homes. I cannot say that I blame them, although the folks on Lowell actually lived with it for 35 years.
For better or worse, what happened with NNHS has led to reforms in the MSBA program that should help to avoid some of the problems we encountered and save on costs. Maybe. There is no question that it should be done. It remains to be seen whether it can be done.
Sean – I should have been clearer and less rushed. I was giving that part as one example. Someone who’s done schools knows what is needed in a good school and knows where the economies are that won’t hurt anything. They also know how to build a more functional school building. I’m speaking as someone who spent the last 2 years of high school in a building by an architect who had clearly never designed a school before – and it showed.
@Sean, I am totally with you on the parking lot and blank walls at the corner of Elm Road and Walnut Street. I had always hoped that the blank wall would be adorned with something like the murals that were painted on the Lowell Ave facade of the old building (which are now recreated in banners that hang on Main Street). Had we gone with Gund’s original design, it would have been a more aesthetically pleasing facade (although it still would have had the parking lot). To save a million or so dollars, Dorr+Whittier substituted its design for the auditorium at King Philip Regional High School for the Gund theater with balcony. This is not a criticism of D+W, it was a cost cutting measure they were asked to do and they drew on their experience designing other schools to design what it still a really nice auditorium, albeit one that turns its back on the Newtonville neighborhood.
There are two primary reasons the cost of NNHS was so high. As Greg pointed out [with the quote from Dan Atkinson’s piece], Mayor Cohen made a critical mistake, having Gund design the building before there was an established budget. The other mistake was wasting years before reaching the decision to build a new school. That delay came at a heavy price, because it happened during a time when the cost of construction materials, [particularly steel] was spiking.
I disagree with Jane’s comment that Mayor Cohen “got what he wanted.” The fact is that he never knew what he wanted, and wasted five years on two other plans [renovation of the existing structure–renovation plus an addition] before finally reaching the right decision to build a new school.
It’s time to stop complaining about Newton North. We got a fantastic school building, and it was worth every penny.
A mural? The corner of Elm and Walnut should have been the front door. You can’t even see the front door from that corner. It’s a suburban/exurban building type dropped on a prime urban lot.
I’ll make you a deal, Mike: I’ll stop complaining about NNHS when the city starts paying for it responsibly. In other words, a debt-exclusion override for the project. Until then …
This sounds like a better process than leaving it up to one person to make the final decision (if I’m understanding the new process correctly).
Steve – Who are the three Newton representatives on the panel?
Do we really have to have this discussion about Graham Gund and Newton North again? To what end?
To what end?
We’re about to embark on a series of school renovations and replacements. There are lessons to be learned — and continuously revisited.
@Sean– I agree with you about the debt exclusion. And also the importance of lessons learned. The most important lesson I can see in all of this, is that you get the leadership you vote for.
Fair enough, Sean. We need to learn from our mistakes. But you are bringing up the same points we’ve discussed repeatedly for years. At what point do we acknowledge that we’ve learned and we’re ready to move on?
At what point do we acknowledge that we’ve learned and we’re ready to move on?
Those are two separate questions. Lessons learned? I am not aware of a consensus that we shouldn’t build an anti-urban school two blocks from a village center. Nor am I aware of a debt-exclusion override on the November ballot. Please let me know when we’re there on either.
On the specific issue of the parking lot/building facade, this is a point that cannot be made too often, as an opportunity to sensitize people to the urban fabric. A few months ago, a person who is active in land use in our fair city who went on at length about the beautiful new building. I pointed out that the entrance was designed for cars, that the parking lot was the face of the building to Newtonville’s center, &c. It caught her up short. It made her rethink. Maybe she’ll look at future projects around a village through a more urban-centric lens.
As for moving on … not my job.
I’m surprised no one mentioned what I consider to be the real problem. The real problem was that Cohen was at the helm and didnt have a clearcut direction to go in. When spending 100-200 million dollars of taxpayers money the first thing that SHOULD have happened was a binding question on the ballot. Cohen would have understood the will of the people and would have been able to direct the process due to the result of the vote.
This would have cut about 5 years from the process and probably $50 million off the project in inflationary costs and would have had the same result.
What worries me is that I don’t see some form of committee that keeps track and improves the process. Steve is there anything out there that is making an effort in reforming and improving our process so we don’t make the same mistakes twice?
We should have a committee filled with construction professionals and contractors who guide us through the process since it’s obvious we will need their guidance in the upcoming years with all the work that needs to be done with all of the other schools.
We need people who aren’t afraid to speak up for the good of the city and people that have experience in construction.
Gail,
Show me an example of where we learned?
Tom,
Lesson #1: Don’t design a building without a budget.
Lesson #2: Don’t start building without funding.
Sean – these were the site problems that caused problems:
“There is a culvert along Walnut where the Laundry Brook goes that we didn’t want to build a bulding on top of. There is also an almost 30 foot difference in elevation from the north to the south side of the site. Then there is the ledge. There was also the buried asbestos, which, as it turns out, we ended up unearthing and having to dispose of anyway at a cost of millions of dollars. There were also concerns that Elm Road residents would live virtually in darkness most of the year if the building were located on Elm Road.” People who lived near the site knew about the culvert, ledge, asbestos, etc. and spoke about to the city at length about all of these issues no availl – I say we were mosquitos that the city spent time and money batting away. One Aldermen once called us “canaries in a coal mine.”
Gail-I don’t bring it up, but if the issue is raised and people provide misinformation, then I’m not going to sit by and let the statements stand. One of the major causes of the fiasco was low-information residents. It’s quite evident from these comments that misinformation is still out there and that some people think that it’s ok to spend money you don’t have That in itself is a cause for concern.
From a financial perspective, lack of detailed planning sets any enterprise up for failure – clear and simple. Our current mayor has done a wonderful job with long term (5-year) operating planning as well as detailed capital planning. Failure here means (1) we were too politically motivated to tell voters the exact funding needed, or (2) we didn’t understand the numbers.
I need new glasses: “people who lived near the site knew about the culvert, ledge, asbestos, etc. and spoke to the city at length about these issues to no avail.”l
Hoss is on the mark. I’m confident things will be different this time around.
Gail,
How do you know we’ve learned that? Have we built something with a budget I am not aware of? I hope we’ve atleast learned that. What I want to know is who were the geniuses behind not having a budget. I bet it goes deeper than the Mayor.
I bet if we put together a committee to oversee future projects they’ll be plenty of other lessons to be learned we haven’t thought of. Where to buy materials, when to buy materials, etc.
I hope your right and we’ve learned that. But in this city, anything can happen.
@Gail: The three Newton representatives on the Designer Selection Panel are Newton CFO Maureen Lemieux, Deputy NPS Superintendent for Operations Sandy Guryan, and Ward 2 School Committee Member Jonathan Yeo.
@Tom: The answer to your question is an emphatic “yes”. As Ted and I have mentioned higher up in this thread, the MSBA runs the show now in exchange for MSBA financing support. They review our enrollment figures, approve the design student population for the school, negotiate the approximate square footage of the new or renovated building, require a comprehensive study of new/renovate+add/relocate options, have the final say in our selection of an owner’s project manager, are in charge of the process for selecting the feasibility study designer (culminating in the meeting this coming Tuesday), approve the feasibility concepts and some specifics of design, approve the overall project budget, and perform ongoing oversight (I’m not sure of the specifics associated with this right now). Newton plays an important role in every one of these items, but they are not ours to control once we agree to engage with the MSBA.
This control by the MSBA serves at least two purposes: It keeps a municipality from “going rogue”, and it models what is proving to be a highly effective process to produce modern school spaces at defendable cost. Even as we do buildings on our own in the future (city or school buildings), the approach we are learning from the MSBA will provide processes and procedures that will be of great benefit to us.
Steve and Ted,
That sounds great.
Related to the two lessons Gail mentioned (“Don’t design a building without a budget, and don’t start building without funding”) is the lesson that I think may be most important:
Lesson #0: Live within your means — looking at all your needs and all your resources.
This means:
a) looking at all our capital needs (not just one project),
b) estimating the capital available (by making various estimates of how much debt service the taxpayers will approve, and then seeing how much capital that debt service will make available), and then
c) developing a long-range facilities plan within that capital constraint.
When the new NNHS was being planned, it did not seem as though the City was thinking at all about the other half of our school building needs, or thinking about taxpayers’ appetite for funding all these projects, and then keeping the design of NNHS within its share of the available capital. The subsequent Long Range Facililties plan contained only a couple of sentences about costs and no assumptions about capital available. We still had not yet learned Lesson #0.
The improved practices that the MSBA is enforcing, as cited by Steve, are very helpful on a building-by-building basis, but we need to be equally careful on a city-wide basis. The Mayor’s recent comprehensive capital plan is an excellent step in this direction — step a), in fact. Now that NNHS is built and we still have perhaps the same amount of construction work yet to do, we need to look at what further capital can be made available through debt exclusions and develop a Long-Range Facilities Plan that meets those needs as best as possible within that capital constraint. Then we will know that we have learned Lesson #0.
What Bruce and Steve said. The MSBA plan sounds responsible and thorough. Every taxpayer in the state contributes to school building projects in some small way, so having the MSBA oversee every step of the process is very appropriate.
I’m not saying that I disagree with the sentiment expressed by others that the state can do a better job than the city taking charge of school construction, but I am very skeptical. It’s easy to fall into the trap of assuming we’re a bunch of incompetents here in Newton, because we had a mayor who bungled two high school projects, albeit in entirely different ways. But there’s something to be said for local control by local officials who are accountable to the voters of Newton.
The state in fact has a very poor record of delivering all types of construction projects on time and within budget. Why do people believe they will do any better with school construction?
Can anyone point to an example or two where this process has worked, delivering a new school on time within budget?
Mike asked, “Can anyone point to an example or two where this process has worked, delivering a new school on time within budget?”
Last January, when Wellesley High School was about ready for students and teachers to move in, it was projected to be “$15 million under the original $130 million allowed for the project” “completed five months ahead of schedule.”
I don’t know if the project followed all of the MSBA guidelines cited in this thread, but it was “constructed to conform to the MSBA’s guidelines for a high performance green school”.
You might be trusting of our beloved Newton — but would you trust Lawrence? If the state is an expert in making mistakes — they should be better equipped in spotting them
Thanks, Bruce. I read the article from the link you provided. As you stated, the article says the school building conformed to state standards, but it does not say it was subject to the same design process as Angier. I’m not one to argue with success, so if anyone can confirm that Wellesley High used the same design selection process as Angier, it would convince me of the merits.
Mike, I don’t know if the MSBA process used for Wellesley HS was identical to the one the MSBA holds out now to Newton, but it involved more oversight than the NNHS project.
Here’s a one-page description of the MSBA/Wellesley process, which called for MSBA confirmation of the selection of project manager and architects, as well as ongoing MSBA oversight, with “MSBA and their expertise to be involved in every step of the process, from the creation of a local School Building Committee to the audit of the project after completion.” It notes that “other neighboring towns, which qualified before the MSBA moratorium, did not have this level of MSBA involvement.”
And this update notes that “The MSBA has outlined a Project Process Flow which provides a road map for building project management,” including these steps:
Bruce– I’m not disagreeing with you, but it’s worth pointing out that Newton followed the MSBA guidelines in place at the time when NNHS was built. And I completely agree with Dan Fahey’s comment above, that it appears Newton and the NNHS project, prompted the MSBA to change that process and those guidelines.
As I read the information in your last post though, I’m trying to discern how the new process and guidelines might have impacted the construction of NNHS, had they been in place at the time…
The new process calls for a project manager approved by the State. We had a project manager hired by the City, who did a pretty darn good job on NNHS. [Worth noting, it was recently reported that they delivered the building $6M under budget].
The new MSBA guidelines also call for a feasibility assessment, and of course we had a feasibility assessment that was part of the soft costs associated with NNHS.
The one place I can see where these new guidelines would have had a substantial impact, was in the selection of an architect. That selection would have been left to the State, and I’m entirely uncomfortable with that.
We can argue whether Gund was the right architect for the project, and frankly, I never thought they were. But let’s give credit where it’s due, Gund did a great job. The problem was that they were not given a budget before they started the design work. That problem would have been the same had the City hired any other architect. You don’t start the design until you have a budget.
So, I’m not trying to pin you down, Bruce, but I’m simply curious. Having read the material you’ve referenced and linked, how do you think the NNHS story would have been different had the new MSBA process been in place at the time?
Having asked the question of you, I’ll answer first with my opinion. I think we would have saved a little money, but ended up with a significantly lesser building. It sort of reminds me how we got into the problem in the first place with the “old’ NNHS. Pinching pennies, cutting corners, and getting 30 years out of a building that should have lasted 100.
Mike Striar,
You, of all people, did not just refer to Newton North as under budget, did you?? As I recall, voters approved a site plan valued at $141 million. And I believe that the BOA approved a funding plan/budget of — I might be wrong here — $157.x million. Cohen’s highest estimate was about $197 million and his last estimate before leaving office — handing over all the problems he created to his successor — was about $191 million.
I wonder if Cohen ever really believed it would come in under $200 million.
Mike, I don’t know how the current process would have changed NNHS (but I do think a rather recent version of it did well for Wellesley). I think the problem we had with NNHS was more basic than MSBA oversight: Even if we had set a budget (say $195M), we would have been doing that without regard to what capital we’d be needing for the rest of the city-wide school needs. (If you think of all our school infrastructure as a house, it’s as though we did a terrific job renovating the first floor but neglected the leaking roof and entire upstairs. Do we now have the money to fix them?)
A quick review of the MSBA assessments of all our school buildings back then showed that NNHS represented just about half of the square footage — and also half of the number of students — in the Newton schools that the MSBA found needed major renovation or replacement. Regardless of the MSBA’s project-management process, we should have looked at that pile of work — vs. the total of debt exclusions that we thought taxpayers would authorize for attractive, sensible projects — and set a budget for NNHS that corresponded to its share. That might have ended up looking like “pinching pennies and cutting corners” (in terms of that one project), but it would have been what we could afford. And it would not have left the myriad of elementary school projects unfunded — which to me is a lot more drastic than pinching pennies and cutting corners.
As we step up talk of debt exclusions, we are now (finally) about to find out what Newton’s appetite is for renovating our school infrastructure — and what we can achieve with the funds available and not yet committed. Would that we knew that then!
Bruce– Staying on the topic of NNHS for a moment. Since neither of us can identify how the new MSBA process would have reduced the cost of NNHS, I remain skeptical about any benefit of the State having more control over our school buildings. I think the MSBA should play an advisory role, because there are a lot of communities that need more than financial assistance when it comes to school construction. I don’t see that as the issue in Newton. I prefer having our elected officials make the decisions, because they can be held directly accountable. Which is in large part why David Cohen is no longer Mayor.
I agree with you that NNHS pulled a lot of dollars off the table that might have been directed at our other schools, many in desperate need of repair for decades now. Although given the three options of what to do about the “old” NNHS, I think we made the right decision going with 100% new construction. We clearly made some mistakes in the overall process [if not the construction process itself], and I believe we financed it in the wrong way. But we had to build a new high school, and we built one the community should be proud of.
Just as I believe we should hold our elected officials accountable for mistakes, I also believe we must hold them accountable for the continued deplorable conditions at many of our school buildings. So, here’s where I disagree with you, [and probably most of the people on this blog]. I believe our infrastructure has reached a point where long term capital planning is no longer a solution, and simply perpetuates the problem, while increasing the eventual cost of repairs. My expectation of a mayor, [any mayor], is that they find and implement real solutions, not just identify the problems in a more cohesive fashion, while planning to someday actually fix them. While I think Mayor Warren is a very good manager, I don’t think he has a genuine plan to address this issue with the urgency it warrants.
Gail– From the Newton Tab…
“The final numbers on Newton North are in. The final expenditures are just over $6 million less than the amended budget for the project, as approved by the Aldermen on Feb. 22, 2011.”
Mike –
“amended” is a loaded word.
Gail– Once a budget is amended, that amended budget becomes “the budget.” I believe what I wrote was accurate, and used in proper context. My point was that the City did in fact have a project manager for NNHS, which is one of the requirements under the new MSBA process. In my opinion, it is unlikely a project manager selected or approved by the State would have altered the final cost. As both you and I wrote earlier, the biggest mistake was designing the building without a budget.
Mike –
I was really stating my point in jest. It bugs me to hear NNHS referred to as “under budget” when it so far exceeded what Cohen projected.
I understand this is off point so I’ll shut up now!
New rule: no more apologizing for going off topic. It’s a conversation. It goes where it wants to go.
Carry on.