ARCHITECTURE New York State | Q2 | June '21

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REIMAGINING BUFFALO’S HISTORIC SCHOOLS by Paul McDonnell, AIA

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wenty years ago the Buffalo City School District embarked on an ambitious project to reconstruct, consolidate and right size its school facilities. Ultimately costing over $1.3 billion, the 15-year project resulted in the reconstruction of 48 schools. Like most “rust belt” cities Buffalo has seen its population drop significantly in the last seventy years. The City reached its peak in 1950 and ranked fifteenth in the country with a population of over 580,000. By 2000 the population had dropped to 292,000 and school enrollment was 45,000 student attending 78 buildings. By 2015 enrollment was down to 34,000 in 60 school buildings. While some of this was attributable to residents leaving the city, many students had shifted to the newly created charter schools. As the population dropped, new school construction stagnated and maintenance and capital improvements on the remaining buildings dropped precipitously. With advancing age, Buffalo’s students were trapped in outdated and inferior schools, especially when compared to their suburban neighbors. The New York State Education Department recognized the obstacles Buffalo was facing and offered an extraordinary amount of building aid, (93.7%), to reconstruct and update its schools. In addition, special legislation was passed to allow Buffalo to pursue financing other than the general municipal bonds sold by the City of Buffalo. To facilitate this a Joint School Construction Board (JSCB) was developed with members from the school district, city and comptroller’s office overseeing the project. They in turn hired the LP Ciminelli Construction Com-

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School 97, Harvey Austin Elementary, Cannon Design

panies to act as “Program Provider.” Ciminelli would finance the project through the Erie County Industrial Development Agency (IDA) and then in partnership with the school district facilities department, they hired architects for programming and design and then procured contractors through completive bidding and managed construction. The 93.7% building aid from New York State would go directly to pay the IDA bonds while the remaining 7.3% would be paid through interest on the bonds and Energy Performance Contracts developed by Johnson Controls. Reconstruction would cost the Buffalo City School District virtually nothing.


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