New Hamden Middle School Plan Presented

After the Hamden Legislative Council approved bonding for an $11.2 million addition to Hamden Middle School in June, the project’s architect has come up with a new architectural model that might add to the pricetag.

Architect Ryszard Szczypek of TSKP Studio presented the preliminary schematic design his firm has developed for the middle school at a School Building Committee meeting Wednesday night.

His plan differed from a previous one prepared by another architect last year. He said his plan would accommodate the programmatic needs of the school, and would add 5,000 more square feet to the footprint than a previous plan, a difference that could add to the cost of construction. Szczypek also said his firm had been given an old traffic study that did not account for the addition of a whole grade, and that the parking lot would also need an addition, which the board had not anticipated in its previous plans.

In 2018, the Board of Education voted to move all sixth graders to the middle school as a part of its districtwide restructuring plan, known as the 3R Initiative. The plan will also close the Shepherd Glen and Church Street elementary schools, introduce universal pre‑K to the district, and create intra-district magnet schools. The town’s council approved bonding for parts of the plan in June.

Over the course of the winter and spring, the board held a series of meetings with Architect Bill Silver of Silver Petrucelli & Associates (read more about that here). With Silver’s help, it finalized the grant applications that the town eventually sent to the state at the end of June. Silver made preliminary drawings and cost estimates for each of the construction projects involved in the 3R plan, including one for the middle school.

Though Silver had created the initial plans, the town chose Ryszard Szczypek in November to carry out the project and create the final architectural plans. Szczypek’s firm, TSKP, designed the middle school when it was first built in 2004 (the firm was called Tai Soo Kim Partners at the time).

The building has five fingers protruding from a curve. Silver’s plan would have tacked a sixth-grade wing onto the end of one of the fingers, as well as adding an addition to the existing gym and expanding the cafeteria.

TSKP’s plan, on the other hand, would concentrate all of the changes in one place. It would attach a new three-story wing with two floors of classroom space and a new gym on the lowest level to the cafeteria end of the building.

Hamden Middle School is broken into ​“houses.” The school currently has ten houses: five for seventh grade and five for eighth. The new plan would expand the school to 12 houses — four for each grade because of declining enrollment.

Szczypek said he and other architects had designed the addition the way they did partly so no students would have to pass through another house to get to their own.

Each house is supposed to be its own community, he said, and the building design should reflect that. ​“You should not pass from one house to another house,” he said. ​“The students should stay in that community throughout the day.”

Architect Michael Scott, who helped with the design, said concentrating the construction to one area of the building only would minimize the disruption to students, who will occupy the building while construction takes place. He said it can also cost less than carrying out construction on multiple ends of the building at once.

While Silver’s preliminary sketch would have placed two houses on the same floor in certain wings, TSKP’s would only have one house on each floor.

Silver’s sketch would have added 24,600 square feet to the school. TSKP’s would add 29,640. The bulk of that difference is in a new gym and in additional wall and circulation space.

Szczypek said he and his partners had been talking with teachers and administrators at the school to determine exactly what they need, and that they would continue to do so. He said the plan to add a full gym came out of those conversations, in which staff said they need a ​“middle school sized” gym.

The plan would also add additional seating to the cafeteria and expand the cafeteria entrance, which teachers and administrators have said is sorely needed.

TSKP’s design is still in a preliminary phase. Scott called it the firm’s ​“initial reaction” to the information they had received about the school’s needs. ​“As you continue to refine these things they typically tighten up,” he said. As the architects continue talks with the town, ​“certain needs can overlap, or certain needs can drop off the table,” reducing the overall size and cost of the project, he said.

Szczypek told the Independent that there is ​“no question” the new plan, as presented, would cost more than what the board budgeted in the spring. As Board of Ed and School Building Committee member Chris Daur put it, ​“as everybody knows, with increased square footage comes increased cost.”

In the spring, the board operated with a ballpark cost estimate of $350 per square foot, he said. Based on that cost factor, an additional 5,040 square feet would add $1.7 million to the project cost. However, the plan is still in flux, and architects may be able to find efficiencies to cut down on cost, said Scott.

In addition to the extra costs associated with a bigger building, the project price might get another bump from changes to the parking lot and traffic flow. The traffic study the town had provided TSKP was from two years ago, said Daur, and did not reflect the extra traffic that will come with an additional grade. Szczypek said he has asked for another traffic study and for estimates of parking space needs so he and his firm can design changes to the parking lot. His building design would have the additional wing encroach on the existing parking lot, and would therefore require shifting part of the lot further from the building.

TSKP will continue to refine its design over the course of the spring and early summer. If all goes according to plan, construction will begin in August.

But first, the architects must present their plans to the town’s Planning and Zoning Commission, which they will do on Feb. 25 at 7 p.m. at Hamden Memorial Town Hall.