PEABODY — The City Council Finance Committee passed an $8 million bond order for a feasibility study on the new Peabody Veterans Memorial High School at last week’s Thursday meeting.
With this support from the City Council, the PVMHS School Building Committee can go to the Massachusetts School Building Authority for approval to move forward with the project.
“If they approve our application, which I’m very, very positive that they will, then we will begin looking into finding an owner’s project manager, and then we will begin the process of finding a design team,” Chair of the School Building Committee Beverley Griffin Dunne said.
Mayor Ted Bettencourt explained at the committee meeting how, since August of 2024, the city has been in the “eligibility phase” with the MSBA and is now on their way to getting into the “feasibility phase.”
“A committee was formed, and it’s an excellent mix of city and school department heads, professionals, educators, elected officials, parents, and construction experts,” he said. “A project of this magnitude is going to require a great deal of expertise and talents of so many people in the city, and this is just the beginning.”
If the request had not been approved and the funding for the feasibility study was not acquired, then Peabody would have been asked to withdraw from the MSBA process.
“We’ve asked for $8 million today. That is a number from reaching out to other communities, reaching out to the MSBA, asking for opinions, getting information, we felt this was the appropriate number to ask for at this stage,” Bettencourt said. “That will help us as we went enter the feasibility portion of this, hiring an owner’s project manager, hiring an architect design team to assist us with this project. That is when things really start to get interesting and we start to make progress.”
According to Griffin Dunne, the next step her committee will take is a smaller group will decide on the language for a request for proposal, which will lay out what the city is looking for in an OPM and design team.
With her experience as chair for the recent Welch Elementary School and Higgins Middle School projects, Griffin Dunne understands the significance of choosing the people who are right for the job.
“Only a few firms have qualified to do a project of this size, so we’ll be looking for the best fit for Peabody,” she said. “It really is exciting because now we’re going to be talking about actual plans. They have to figure out where new construction would go, and they have to evaluate the site.”
Once the OPM and architect design team lay out the options for the high school project, the city will start to get a clearer idea of what the construction will cost and how long it might take.
Additionally, these team members will lay out the feasibility of different scenarios, including the demolition of the entire school, if some buildings are renovated, or if they are just repaired.
Already, the School Building committee has expressed their interest in keeping the field house and auditorium, giving them renovations instead of fully tearing them down.
“What they will do is they will conduct a really thorough examination of the current building with its good points and its bad points, and then they will present us with choices,” Griffin Dunne said. “So, they will give us options with price tags and the choice on the project is always ultimately Peabody’s choice.”
