The Massachusetts School Building Authority voted last month to advance Needham’s plans for the reconstruction of Pollard Middle School to the next phases of the MSBA process.
“There’s a lot of work ahead on a very complicated project,” Superintendent Dan Gutekanst said of the MSBA’s sooner-than-expected decision when he spoke to the town’s Permanent Public Building Committee at its most recent meeting.
“It’s going to be complicated; it’s going to be time consuming; it’s going to be expensive,” he told the PPBC, which will oversee the construction.
The MSBA vote means the town needs to form a project team (it has), begin the selection process for a project designer, conduct a feasibility study and eventually begin the schematic design process. Town Meeting approved $2.75 million in May 2024 to fund the process, which includes $1.5 million for the designer.
Hank Haff, the town’s director of design and construction and de facto project manager on the effort, said the town has all the pieces it needs in place to begin working with the MSBA to select a designer, whom he hopes to have on board by early 2025.
A best-case scenario would be to complete a detailed schematic and cost estimate to establish a total project cost in time for a vote at Special Town Meeting in October 2026. The project funding agreement is expected to require upwards of $300 million.
“This two-year schedule may be optimistic as the MSBA is handling many large and small projects at this time,” said Haff.
The town’s efforts have moved through the MSBA process at a relatively rapid rate. If that trend continues it would tee up a possible November 2026 townwide Prop. 2 1/2 override election to seek the voters’ approval for the necessary funding. The MSBA reimbursement could offset the town’s costs by more than $60 million.
“We will be looking at both a teardown and new construction on the site,” Haff said of the broad outline for the upcoming study.
The town’s preferred plan is to expand Pollard to once again be a grade 6-8 middle school. This would allow High Rock, a sixth grade-only school since 2009, to be converted to a sixth elementary school. Pollard would remain open during the construction process.
The plan will be vetted during the feasibility study once the town has hired its designer. Haff said the designer “will have to look at both a sixth, seventh and eighth grade combined at the site, as well as just seventh and eighth grade at the site.”
It is ultimately the MSBA’s decision on the grade configuration and on whether to rebuild at Pollard or make the construction of a new building at a new site a condition for receiving the reimbursement funds it could provide.
The MSBA has established a planned capacity of 1,335 students for a 6-8 school, and 880 students for a 7-8 grade-only school. The feasibility study will apply those enrollment figures to determine programming and other needs.
Another key metric in establishing the overall budget will be the expected square footage costs of construction, which will also affect how much the MSBA will reimburse the town.
The MSBA will only reimburse up to certain per-square-foot thresholds. If the town ultimately wishes to exceed those thresholds, any amount beyond that threshold will not be eligible for reimbursement and would be paid for by the town.
At the PPBC meeting, Haff acknowledged the longstanding desire in town for a state-of-the-art performance center, a feature the MSBA does not generally reimburse.
“The MSBA program only allows for a ‘gymatorium’ or a ‘cafetorium’, and only allows for one gym,” he said. Pollard currently has two gyms and an auditorium that is seen as long overdue for upgrading.
“So part of this whole programming process will be an assessment as to what we keep and what we use. At the same time, there’s urging from members of the community to put in a very advanced and fairly large theater. And if that is the case, then that would have to be paid for entirely by the town with likely no participation by the MSBA, which does complicate the whole process.”
Then there’s the upward trend in construction costs, which spiked during the pandemic but which Haff said have somewhat corrected. “There was a large increase in costs during the COVID period and pricing is always ‘sticky’ when coming down. The long-predicted recession has not materialized and the economy appears to be coming in for a soft landing.”
Still, Haff pointed to the projected square-foot cost for a planned elementary school in Dedham that the MSBA website lists at $950 per square foot, and projects in Boston that exceed $1,000 per square foot. Needham’s most recent school project, the Sunita Williams Elementary School that opened in 2019, cost $417 per square foot.
The starting MSBA reimbursement rate for the Pollard project is 35.4%, but Haff explained there are multiple factors that will drive that rate down. “There are limitations in terms of cost per square foot and site improvements that will bring that reimbursement rate down to earth,” he said.
The SWES project began with a 34.7% reimbursement rate that ended up being closer to 22%.
Construction costs for middle and high schools tend to be higher on a per-square-foot basis due to the need for labs and other programming considerations. “I just want to brace people for the price tag that we’re looking at,” Haff said.
Assuming voters approve the override in fall 2026, construction would likely start in the spring/summer of 2028, according to Haff. “Assuming three stages of construction, there would be a phased occupancy over a three-year period with final stage occupancy in September 2031.”
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