Hamden Middle School Expansion Plan Approved

A 2018 proposal to move sixth graders out of elementary classrooms and into an expanded middle school is one step closer to fruition following site plan approval from Hamden’s Planning and Zoning Commission.

The commission Tuesday night voted unanimously, with the exception of one abstention, to approve the long-stalled plan to add classroom space, cafeteria area, parking spots, and an additional few hundred students to the middle school (with a projected total population in years to come of 1,200 sixth, seventh and eighth graders.)

In turn, more room will open in the town’s elementary schools to accommodate new special education classrooms and pre‑K services.

The project would mean constructing a new, three-story wing attached to the back of the Dixwell Avenue school’s northern side in order to join hundreds of sixth graders currently spread across the district’s eight elementary schools together in one building.

It would also mean upping the number of paved parking spaces by 37, from 198 to 235, also towards the northeast side of the property.

The total town property, which includes town center park to the school’s north, on which the school sits is 78.57 acres, 20 acres of which is protected land for wildlife habitat. With the extra wing and added parking, Town Engineer Stephen White said the town would be allotting 11.7 acres for public education purposes.

Read more about the design, which was first prepared and pitched in 2020, here.

Architect Ryszard Szczypek of TSKP Studio said that the district can minimize disruptions to the seventh and eighth grade community by concentrating all construction on one side of the property. According to Michael Mendick, the chairman of the town’s school building committee, construction is expected to begin on site this coming spring in order to allow sixth graders to start up classes at the middle school by September 2024.

The go ahead from P&Z marks real movement on a project pitch that has been put off for at least a year due to unexpected obstacles. 

Hamden’s Legislative Council first permitted the town to take out bonds to fund the expansion in 2018 as part of a broader plan to reorganize classrooms and even shut down multiple schools to address declining enrollment and racial imbalance while increasing pre‑K services across the district.

Over the past four years, the town has since backtracked on many components of that plan, such as an idea to shut down two neighborhood schools. The middle school expansion proposal was one of the remaining facets of interest within the complicated district redesign — but following the pandemic, the total cost of the project jumped by roughly $6 million more than was originally anticipated. The town then had to postpone the project, waiting several additional months to reapply for extra reimbursement from the state after the cost of expansion increased from an estimated $11 million to $17 million.

Now that funding and site approval have both been secured, the town’s school building committee said next steps include awarding contracts to various construction companies and preparing for their spring start date.

Nora Grace-Flood’s reporting is supported in part by a grant from Report for America.