As new school rises, Allenstown considers what to do with old buildings

By EILEEN O’GRADY

Monitor staff

Published: 02-02-2023 3:38 PM

In Allenstown, steel framing rising two stories high reveals the steady progress on a new K-8 school on River Road.

Construction of the school, which will replace the town’s current separate elementary and middle school buildings, has been underway since August, and Project Manager Gordon Bristol estimates it will be complete by spring 2024, a few months later than school officials had initially hoped due to permit delays. The district hired Bristol in 2021 to manage the project.

Foundations of the building are in place and construction crews are about 50% finished with the steel framework, which is slated to be complete by mid-February. The 83,000-square-foot building is being constructed in sections, Bristol explained. That means some sections are still waiting on steel framing, while other sections are already being weatherproofed. In some areas, crews have started adding insulation, and work on the roof is expected to begin in a matter of days.  

Bristol said building in sections is helpful because it allows crews to focus on one area of the large building at a time, and make extensive progress on the sections that are already complete.

“You can have one end of it just starting and the other end of it in a whole different phase,” Bristol said. “It's kind of exciting.”

The Allenstown School Board is also moving forward with a proposal to get solar panels installed on the new school roof. At a Jan. 9 board meeting, Andrew Kellar, a representative from NH Solar Gardens estimated that the array would offset 60-70% of electricity usage at the new school. The board voted to allow Kellar to proceed with the proposal.

“All the way along, we've tried to see how we can be energy-efficient,” Bristol said, adding that the new school’s toilets, showers and furnace were chosen to be as efficient as possible, and the air handlers have variable frequency drives so they’ll run according to demand in the building.

In a year when supply chain issues are a problem for many industries, Bristol said they’ve been ordering building materials and other items well in advance to avoid any delays. For example, they’ve already ordered the furniture for the new school library and it will be kept in a storage facility nearby until the rooms are ready to be furnished.

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“Back in the olden days of construction you would do ‘just in time delivery,’ it arrives just in time,” Bristol explained. “What we're doing now is we are buying stuff ahead of time as we can get it so that we don't have to worry about it getting here.”

The school is expected to cost $32.5 million in total, with $19.5 million coming from state building aid, and the rest coming for a $13 million bond.

Bristol said the project continues to be on budget. He said they did lose a few months of potential building time this summer while waiting for permits from New Hampshire Fish and Wildlife. 

The new school is expected to be completed in March or April 2024, according to Bristol. The district has not yet set an opening date for the new school building, when students will move to River Road from the current Allenstown Elementary School and Armand R. Dupont Middle School buildings.

At town meeting in March, voters will again be asked to consider future uses of the old buildings.

Town officials have proposed a vision to convert the current Allenstown Elementary School – a 33,000-square-foot building 0n Main Street –  into new municipal offices, a community center and business incubator space. Voters will be asked whether or not to transfer $200,000 of existing funds into a new municipal building reserve fund for the project. Since the money will be taken from the unassigned fund balance, it isn’t expected to have an impact on the tax rate.

At the same meeting, voters will also be asked to vote on the town’s plan to purchase the current middle school building for $1, with the intention of exploring new uses for the property and possibly re-selling it.

The town and school deliberative sessions, which include plans for the old schools, will be held Saturday at the Armand Dupont Middle School, starting at 9 a.m.

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