By Bill Slocum
Contributing Editor
The Board of Selectmen Tuesday reviewed a plan approved by the Board of Education last week for a new New Lebanon School building in Byram.
“Option 1,” the Board of Education-approved plan, involves construction of a two-story, 58,000-square-foot structure on land adjacent to the present 37,000-square-foot elementary-school building, built in 1956. Supporters claim it is both cost-efficient and poses minimal disruption for students and families. Option 1 came under criticism from the Board of Selectmen for such issues as its proximity to I-95, being built along a ravine, and the concept of keeping the existing school operational while the new school is built.
“I am reluctant to approve or vote for a plan that houses kids in session when school construction is going on,” Selectman Drew Marzullo said.
Marzullo and the other selectmen challenged architects Tai Soo Kim and Ryszard Szczypek to consider alternatives to Option 1 that would use more of the existing school footprint and less of the ravine. But the architects, joined by Board of Education members and others, pushed back.
“Option 1 is very simple in my mind, [and] very easy, construction-wise,” Kim told the selectmen. By way of contrast, Kim pointed out that another option supported by the selectmen earlier this year, Scheme D, requires a three-story building, with “too much up and down between the classrooms and the gymnasium,” built partly on steep rock with a 27-foot drop.
First Selectman Peter Tesei challenged Kim and Szczypek on whether land where the Option 1 building would be built had been tested for contamination, and whether that might cause issues—what Tesei called “unknowns”—that could bring the project to a halt in mid-construction.
Szczypek answered that while testing has not been done, the land is not deemed hazardous: “There is nothing in the ravine that we are alarmed about.”
Stephen Walko, head of the special Building Committee spearheading plans for New Lebanon’s rebuilding and recommending Option 1, told the selectmen Option 1 represents the best chance for getting a new school building on the New Lebanon site by September 2018, following a timetable he described as very compressed.
“The deadlines we are under now are the budgetary deadlines for the town of Greenwich,” Walko said.
Beyond the Board of Selectmen, Option 1 must also get approval from the Board of Estimate and Taxation as well as the Planning and Zoning Commission and the Representative Town Meeting as a municipal improvement. Denial from any of those agencies would require the Board of Education to start anew.
Keeping students on campus during construction was described at the meeting by Schools Superintendent William McKersie as both safe and cost-efficient. Board of Education chair Laura Erickson said that even if New Lebanon students were to be moved off-campus during construction, as Marzullo advocates, the preference of her board would remain Option 1, simply for its design features.
“It can work, with a well-defined construction plan,” Erickson says. “There is definitely a way to make it work.”
Tesei identifies the ravine and contamination concerns as key for his board, which he expects to make a decision within the next few weeks. “I think we made incremental progress in discerning what the possibilities are, and recognizing there is no silver bullet,” he noted.
