The Pell School addition is moving forward! On Monday, Feb. 22nd, the School Building Committee (SBC) voted unanimously to recommend the team of Behan Brothers Construction and Studio JAED as the Pell School Design-Build team to the Newport School Committee. The School Committee vote will take place this Thursday Feb. 25th. There were many impressive vendor submittals but after an exhaustive evaluation process the team’s overwhelming recommendation is the Behan/JAED team.
If approved by the School Committee, the Behan/JAED team will begin work immediately on the 1st of 3 design submissions required by RIDE and the SBC. There is a considerable amount of engineering work that must be completed this Spring, which will greatly influence the re-design at Pell. The engineering work includes assessments on storm water, traffic flow, soil issues and more. The Behan/JAED team has significant experience delivering quality projects around Rhode Island as well as in Newport specifically. We are very excited to partner with them to achieve forward movement.
Also, on Monday Feb. 22nd, Request For Qualification (RFQ) responses from 11 Architectural and Engineering firms arrived at City Hall to lead the new Rogers High School project. It is the same SBC team who will be turning their time and attention to reviewing, scoring, interviewing and recommending the Architectural firm for Rogers. It is truly an exciting time to see the “work begin on our school building projects”. Once again, we thank the Newport voters for their resounding 78% support and recognition of the need to improve our schools. Our School Building Committee is doing everything we can to ensure a high-quality design and construction outcome for today’s students, our entire community and future generations of Newporters.
More to come soon, stay tuned!
Rebecca Bolan and Louisa Boatwright
Co-Chairs Newport School Building Committee