Architects present $24.9 million renovation plan for Edelman Valley High School, no new addition proposed

At a RSU 40/MSAD 40 meeting, architect Anne Terrer presented a $24.9 million conceptual renovation plan for Edelman Valley High School and said the design team concluded the district does not need a building addition, relying instead on interior reconfiguration and systems replacement. The board was told the plan focuses on asbestos abatement, HVAC and ventilation replacement, code-required fire separations and accessibility upgrades ahead of a June 9 warrant vote.

Terrer, owner of Noble Studio, said the team’s space-optimization work showed the existing building can meet the district’s needs without an addition. "We found out we didn't need an addition," she said, adding that avoiding an addition was intended to keep the scope fiscally responsible and focused on core building systems.

The presentation identified about 50,000 square feet of hazardous flooring material for remediation and said the conceptual scope includes installing a sprinkler system and fire-separation walls to meet current code. "It's remediating the approximate 50,000 square feet of hazardous material in the floors," Terrer said. The plan also calls for a complete HVAC redesign to replace inefficient unit ventilators and outdated ventilation equipment, particularly in the Industrial Arts wing.

Carrie, the EEI representative introduced by the architect, discussed cost trade-offs and grant support. She said auditorium upgrades were excluded from the base scope because of cost; auditorium options "ranged from a few hundred thousand to around $1,000,000 depending on where we wanted to go," with a mid-range option near $300,000 if chosen. The presenters said they had secured roughly $1.5 million in a state grant targeted at asbestos abatement, flooring and water-quantity improvements and noted a separate $2 million state ventilation grant; presenters described the district as having received "almost $4,000,000" from state programs for related work across multiple projects.

The team described a phased construction approach to limit disruption to classes: asbestos removal and the most invasive demolition would occur in summer slants over three summers, with noninvasive work continuing during the school year. Presenters said they will finalize energy models and lifecycle cost analyses during design so the district can estimate annual operational savings from new HVAC systems.

Board members raised detailed questions about lifecycle energy savings, asbestos-removal sequencing, flooring alternatives (epoxy or finished concrete instead of tile), and contingency. Presenters said the estimate includes a 5% contingency within the miscellaneous/design line and that the construction contract would be a not-to-exceed (cap) arrangement. They also recounted prior district investments: an earlier $1 million allocation helped leverage nearly $10 million of work (biomass plant, control upgrades, window and roof work, septic and ventilation improvements) through state funding and performance contracts.

Other programmatic changes described include relocating public-facing services to a front resource center (consolidating the nurse and counseling offices), widening hallways by removing underused lockers, right-sizing locker rooms and expanding the athletic training room, and modernizing science labs with new sinks, countertops and gasnozzles.

The architects and EEI emphasized that final costs will be refined during schematic and design-development phases and that alternatives (for flooring, finishes, and system choices) will be evaluated against the project budget. The board was told the warrant article would ask voters to fund the phased renovation; if approved, asbestos abatement would begin the first summer after the vote and the design/construction team would move through final engineering and phased construction planning.