EASTHAM — The estimated completion of the Nauset Regional High School building project has been moved out a year from August 2024, the date advertised by the building committee in March, to August 2025.
Voters in a district-wide election approved the $131.8-million project in March. It will be funded in part by a $36.6-million state grant.
Flansburgh Architects offered a new timeline at the building committee’s July 14 meeting. The first phase would begin next summer with portable classrooms installed on the northwest corner of the campus near the A and C buildings.
Phase 1B, the longest, is projected to run from September 2022 to May 2024. During that stretch, renovations to the gym and N building will take place, along with construction of a new performing arts center, cafeteria, and three-story academic building.
Phase 2, from May 2024 to May 2025, includes renovation of A, B, C, and D buildings on the west side of the campus.
In Phase 3, from May to August 2025, the modular classrooms would be removed and the remaining site work completed.
The committee plans to bid on 37 modular units becoming available from a recent school project in Lincoln. Should that fail, consulting project director Joseph Sullivan said at the building committee’s Aug. 4 meeting, other options exist.
“Everything is expensive right now,” Sullivan noted.
Increased costs may require the building committee to make cuts as the final construction estimate is readied for a committee vote on Sept. 15. The design development submission to the state is scheduled for Sept. 16.
“Do we have any feedback on where projects are going out right now,” regional school committee chair Chris Easley asked at the Aug. 4 meeting.
“Out of control — that’s where it is,” answered Flansburgh Architects principal-in-charge Kent Kovacs.
Kovacs pointed to Covid-related shortages of Canadian steel and higher site contractor costs. “It’s become tough,” he said. “I’ve had two projects where we had to do a lot of cutting — not just finish materials but systems.”
Sullivan suggested that cuts could be restored to the project if bids come in favorably.
