Next Step for NHS Renovation: Picking an Architect

Just a week after borough voters an $81 million plan to renovate Naugatuck High School, a committee in charge of overseeing the project will hold its inaugural meeting on Tuesday.

“It’ll be a quick meeting just to get the committee together to talk about our game plan going forward,” said Burgess Robert Neth, who is acting as chairman of the Naugatuck High School Building Committee.

The meeting is set for 6 p.m. at the Hall of Burgesses on the fourth floor of Town Hall.

The committee’s first task will be recommending an architect for the three-year project, which will be responsible for designing a detailed floor plan. Neth said the borough has already posted an advertisement, called a Request for Qualifications, for companies to bid on the job, with the deadline being Nov. 28.

Once all the bids are in, a three-member subcommittee will recommend a company to the full committee. After that, the building committee will submit its recommendation to the Board of Mayor and Burgesses, which has the final say on what firm the borough will hire, said Mayor Robert Mezzo.

“I’m going to believe that we should have somebody hired before Christmas,” Neth said.

The renovation plan is expected to start in the summer of 2012. The high school will remain open during the three-year completion time, and by 2015 the school will have redone classrooms, a new entrance, new windows, redone fields and a number of structural problems fixed.

An architectural firm, New Britain-based Kaestle Boos Associates Inc., first presented the proposed plan to the borough, and has been responsible for explaining all of the details to the public.

But Kaestle Boos is not exempt from the application process.

“They’ve got to bid onit just like any other person,” he said.

Whatever architectural firm is pixed will have to submit a design that will be sent to the state Board of Education, which also has to sign off on it, Neth said.

Apart from Neth, the members on the committee include Controller Wayne McAllister, Cindy Herb, Kevin Knowles and Ray Lennon, high school Principal Jan Saam and teacher Charlie Marenghi.

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