SWAMPSCOTT — Flow of traffic and pedestrians were the major concerns discussed at the Planning Board meeting regarding the site plan review for the new elementary school project on Monday night.
Architect Leigh Sherwood from Lavallee Brensinger Architects said that the site plans represented a culmination of about two years of work on the new elementary school project, which will be located at 10 Whitman Road at the site of the current Stanley Elementary School,
“This represents a substantially complete set for you to look at, meaning that, is it perfect? Nothing is perfect but we really put a lot of time and effort into coordinating it and trying to answer your questions,” said Sherwood. “Swampscott is a green community and we have approached this as a model for sustainable development for your town.”
The school building will be fully geothermal and self-sufficient. It will be fully electric with one oil tank for generators.
The building will be placed on the south side of the lot with its back against Ewing Woods, which students will be able to see from the cafeteria. All of the classrooms face either south or north.
The architectural team chose warm materials for the building and three colors (yellow, blue and green) that distinguish the lower school, library and upper School to reference the natural resources of the town, such as beach sand, the ocean and the woods.
At the front of the lot on the right, there will be a fenced grass play field, which might be naturally irrigated and a fenced big playground. On the left side, separated by a roadway, there will be a parking lot for about 65 spaces, including three accessible spots.
There will be a smaller parking lot in front of the upper school with 19 parking spaces, including three handicap-accessible spots, and an overflow parking lot at Swampscott Middle School for staff to accommodate all parking needs.
The traffic will flow from Whitman Road up to the school, where it will split into directions — to the lower school drop-off area and around the parking lot back onto Whitman Road, and to the upper school drop-off area with an exit through the Unitarian Universalist Church.
There are a lot of greenery buffers around the perimeter of the property for the neighbors, Sherwood said, which will be landscaped with all native plantings that require low watering.
Walkways will be mostly concrete, while the curbing will be made from granite. The property will be well lit with night-sky-compliant lights that won’t blind the neighbors.
“We put as many lights on the building as they could,” Sherwood said.
David Conway, a civil engineer, said that the site will require three to four feet of blasting in some areas, but the rock will probably be transported on trucks from the site without grinding. Site utilities will include geothermal wells below the grade and a new water line.
In terms of drainage, which will be reviewed in depth by the Conservation Commission, the flows to the wetlands will not be affected by the school project, Conway said. Any improvements around Forest Avenue Extension beyond the school site will need to be taken care of by the town.
Rebecca Brown, of Greenman-Pedersen, Inc. (GPI), presented the traffic and safety plans for the new school. She said the plans and calculations took into account the current addresses of students, pre-COVID-19 traffic statistics in the area, seasonal adjustments and future traffic growth of up to 10 years.
Brown proposed a split of school traffic in two directions between Whitman Road and Forest Avenue, based on which parts of the town the cars will be coming from and going to. The parents will have an option to drop off their kids at the lower school on the left or the upper school on the right, depending on where they are planning to go next.
To move the queue quickly in the afternoon, the assignment can be based on the students’ addresses, which will help minimize the traffic to the Nason Road area.
Additional access for emergency vehicles will be organized through Forest Avenue Extension onto Humphrey Street, which will also be used by buses in the afternoon to avoid student pickup traffic.
The pickup will happen in stages, Brown suggested. Walkers and bikers will be released first before the traffic from parents picking up their children. About 18 cars will be loaded at a time and released in groups, or platoons, as Brown called them.
A number of the locations off the school campus will need crossing guards. For traffic safety, Brown said, GPI is proposing to make Orchard Road a one-way street permanently, all the way from Nason Road to Humphrey Street.
Orchard Road sidewalks will be widened and the school side of the road will have a bike lane, while cars will be able to park on the other side. GPI also proposed a number of traffic-calming improvements in the area, such as bumpouts at crosswalks throughout the neighborhood, particularly at Nason Road and Neighborhood Road, and high visibility crosswalks and flashing beacons.
However, Planning Board Chair Angela Ippolito was not convinced by the traffic and safety plan.
“A lot of what I see in the traffic plan didn’t give me a sense of comfort,” said Ippolito, adding that she didn’t feel like the school would be able to efficiently handle the volume of traffic.
She was not convinced that parents’ cars will be moving in groups fast enough. She also questioned some of the pedestrian crossings, which are necessary but will cross the car queues and slow down the flow of traffic and create safety concerns.
“We are taking the human factor out of it,” said Ippolito.
Brown said that crossing guards will be positioned at the farther side of the crosswalk from the school and will stop groups of children from crossing. They will also direct cars into the loading areas, intermittently.
Sherwood noted that many schools are doing a good job of orchestrating traffic and coming up with systems that work for their situation. He said Superintendent of Schools Pamela Angelakis is dedicated to figuring out the flow of traffic.
“She is very open-minded to the idea of having different dismissals and whatever it takes scheduling wise to make this flow the best,” Sherwood said.
The Planning Board had no concerns about the parking and landscape compliance. It will continue to review the site plans for the new school at its next meeting.
