All five members of the Park & Recreation Commission expressed concerns over the potential negative impacts to multiple town playing fields if the town opts to construct a new Pollard Middle School at a site centered on the current DeFazio Field complex parking lot.
Representatives of the Pollard Middle School Building Committee and the project’s architect spent more than an hour at the Aug. 11 commission meeting discussing the progress to date on how the town plans to renovate or replace the nearly 70-year-old school.
The project is still in the feasibility study phase and the building committee formed to oversee the project has DeFazio on its list of potential sites. In addition to being the custodians of DeFazio, the Park & Rec Commission also has legal jurisdiction over a portion of the site being considered for construction.
“We don’t plan to stand in the way of a project that needs to be done,” longtime commissioner Cynthia Chaston told the representatives of the building committee, who were also joined by Town Manager Katie King.
Park & Rec theoretically could refuse to relinquish its jurisdiction, although it is uncertain how that process would play out.
“That’s not who we want to be,” Chaston said. “But we’re also elected to obviously be the stewards of these properties. And we need to make sure that we fulfill our responsibilities while you fulfill yours.”
The Pollard building committee has been studying seven options and has set a Sept. 2 deadline to settle on which options will undergo more intense scrutiny. As was the case at an earlier meeting of the Permanent Public Building Committee, the building committee focused on three of those options with the Park & Rec members.
Those options all involve building a 1,335-student Grade 6-8 school and they are:
• An “addition/renovation” of the current Pollard building
• New construction at the current Pollard site
• New construction at the DeFazio complex
The town is following a process established by the Massachusetts School Building Authority as a condition of the town receiving state reimbursement that could cover more than 20% of the cost of what is currently estimated to be a $313 million project. That process requires the town to consider alternative sites, which is especially challenging in Needham due to its lack of suitable and available open space.
DeFazio had previously been identified as a possible alternative site during the Sunita L. Williams Elementary School project. It has often been described as presenting significant challenges and an unlikely option, a factor that was addressed by Town Manager King.
“DeFazio has long been identified as a potential site,” King said at the outset of the discussion. “But I think, over the last two weeks … it went from more theoretical to more real or possible.”
In fact, all three options present many of the same obstacles — tight sites which lack staging or laydown areas for construction activity, significant wetlands and stormwater considerations, parking and traffic management issues, interference with other town functions and others.
When the discussion focused on how construction at DeFazio would be handled, every Park & Rec commission member raised concerns. Michelle Geddes noted that there are days when every single DeFazio playing field is in use and parking is constrained as it is.
“This is something that happens all the time, and the amount of space to allow for that during construction seems very challenging,” she said.
“I just don’t see how it would work,” Chaston added. “I don’t see how the fields would be accessed. I don’t see how it would be safe — safe for the athletes, safe for the spectators.”
Commissioners noted that current use of the facility is constrained by wetlands and stormwater considerations. The parking lot where the school would be situated has long been notorious for its crater-sized potholes and propensity for flooding.
Commissioners also asked if fields were damaged during construction, would there be funding provided to refurbish them.
“We would never use a field for laydown space and then not refurbish it back to the way it was, or do something that would hurt the other fields as part of this project,” said Tina Stanislaski of HMFH Architects, the project design firm.
“The town would end up paying for them,” added Hank Haff, the town’s director of design and construction and a member of the building committee, saying that funding would be included in the overall project budget.
“They could be included in the site costs within the Pollard project. But they probably would not be reimbursable costs,” he added, meaning the MSBA would not contribute funds.
Chaston and her colleagues did not seem reassured.
“Clearly we are Park & Rec so we’re never going to like a building built in the middle of our athletic complex,” she said. “No one should be surprised at that.”
“I think of this as a 50-year decision. This is forever. We don’t get these fields back. We don’t get this space back. So we really must be sure we put this building in what is the very best space for the long term.”
Next up on the Pollard project calendar is an Aug. 21 townwide Zoom discussion.
And at its next meeting on Aug. 25, the PPBC expects to discuss preliminary cost estimates for all options.
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