On Sunday October 21, 2018, City Manager Wyatt Shields and Superintendent Peter Noonan hosted a town hall to update the community about the development of the George Mason High School site.
If you watch the video, at timestamp 5:40, Superintendent Peter Noonan describes where we are in the timeline and talks about the phases of the project. The Schematic Design Phase is an extremely critical phase for the community stakeholders as it is in this phase that the program specifications of each department or space are defined, finalized and ultimately contractually incorporated into the design plans. The timeline below shows that this phase is now complete.
According to the Comprehensive Agreement, for the Design and Construction of the New George Mason High School between Falls Church City School Board and Gilbane Building Company, (from section 2.6.1 PRELIMINARY EVALUATION), Gilbane Building Company (referred to as Private Entity) which includes its design team, “shall review Owner’s Program to ascertain the requirements of the Project and shall verify such requirements with Owner…. “ The agreement further states that “Private Entity’s Preliminary Evaluation” shall specifically identify any deviations from Owner’s Program, provided that no deviation from the Program shall be permitted absent the express written agreement of the Owner.”
Actions taken during this phase have already created quite a stir in the community as stakeholders only recently discovered that changes had been made to the theater space. It was disclosed that the theater was to be constructed without a theatrical fly rigging system.
According to Superintendent Noonan, the next phase, the Detailed Design phase, is where the community is invited to participate in the space planning in terms of how the desks might be arranged, what kind of seating is purchased etc. and that starts in November.
Here is the link to the video of the meeting.
The link to the PowerPoint slides that accompanied the presentation can be found here.
Can the school or the committee let us know what has changed from the original requirements? Is there a place where that information is stored?
George, that is a great question! I have been trying to piece that information together especially with regard to the Performing Arts part of the high school and it is not easy to follow. I hear that changes are being made but it is hard to follow it via documents. If you check out the timeline attached to my article, posted yesterday, there is some information there (but it is still confusing!)
I’m not sure I can follow the changes. It would be nice to have a document that states the orginal spec, and what changed and if it is any cost savings or cost escalation to us.
I really don’t like the fact that all the green space must be built on to afford the school.
In addition to requirements, folks should be very
interested in what, if anything, has changed in terms of cost and financing….and is there anything under discussion that is causing the overall cost to rise, or ideally decline, or adding new requirements that will increase total cost, over and beyond the budgeted cost that was promised to taxpayers,
Dale, I haven’t seen that kind of information either but my guess is we are not looking at any significant reduction in cost as being an objective. Take a look at this Virtual Tour of the new school. The open spaces and all that glass are not for an economy school. I hope this link works for you,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhE1rpmbJWI&t=417s Check it out. It’s cool!