East Hampton schoolkids and their parents have waited decades for their aging high school to undergo the kinds of improvements that will facilitate 21st-century learning.
If antiquated classroom space unconducive to a modern science/technology curricula wasn’t bad enough, on sweltering days, pupils and teachers find it even more challenging to keep cool, because much of the schoolhouse isn’t air conditioned. High-school A/C has topped residents’ and town educators’ complaint- and wish-lists for years.
Now, countdown has begun toward the scheduled November start of a $52 million inside-out, “as-new” renovation of the approximately 123,000-square-foot, single-story hilltop structure at 15 N. Maple St. Construction is expected to be finished by summer 2017.
When completed, the 52-year-old building that underwent a 47,000-square-foot addition in 1974, with minor handicapped-access upgrades in 1989, will be the most modern of the town’s four schools.
The new science wing, gymnasium and an overhead cooling system found in only a handful of Connecticut buildings but used mostly outside the U.S., stand out among the lengthy list of enhancements, according to S/L/A/M Collaborative Inc. architect Glenn Gollenberg, principal in charge of East Hampton High’s makeover.
Downes Construction in New Britain has been hired as general contractor.
The science wing, on the building’s east side, along the school’s main-entrance driveway, and the gym, relocated to the west side, closer to the school’s ballfields, will be built first, Gollenberg said. Those new spaces — 32,000 square feet in all — will host classes and other activities while the rest of the building is gutted and remade in stages.
Eventually, the existing gym will become part of the high school’s expanded library-media center, Gollenberg said. About 30,000 square feet of the building’s most outmoded spaces, too, will be demolished.
The high school’s overall post-remodeling footprint, the lead architect said, will be about 2,000 square feet less, partly due to a projected enrollment decline. School Superintendent Diane Dugas’ office projects the high school’s population to fall from 527 in the 2013-14 term, to 452 by the 2017-18 period, and to 465 in 2018-19.
However, all its spaces will be enveloped in energy-saving insulation from roof to floor and be totally air-conditioned using that rare “cooling beam” technology.
S/L/A/M, teaming with the Middletown headquarters office of electrical-lighting-plumbing designer Consulting Engineering Services Inc., has designed a chilled-beam cooling system for the renovated high school.
The technology differs from traditional chilled-air systems mainly in that chilled water runs through ceiling pipes to deliver ambient cooling of the warm overhead air, experts say. Because cold air is dense, it falls to the floor in a convection loop that drives lighter, warm air upward to keep the cooling cycle going.
Advantages of the system are that its pipes take up less space overhead and costs less than bulkier, fabricated sheetmetal ducting used in blown-air systems, Gollenberg said. Another is that chilled-beam systems run quieter, helping meet state guidelines for ambient noise levels in classrooms.
In Connecticut, the S/L/A/M-designed Waterbury Career Academy opened last year with chilled-beam cooling that CES also worked on, said CES engineer Sal Fazzino.
Other in-state building makeovers and new construction with chilled-beam technology include ESPN’s Bristol childcare facility that opened in 2011; and United Illuminating’s space in Orange in 2012, officials said. New York’s Cornell University and New Jersey’s Montclair University, too, employ chilled-beam cooling systems.
Deal Watch wants to hear from you. E-mail it, along with contact information to: gseay@HartfordBusiness.com.
Greg Seay is the Hartford Business Journal News Editor.
