Winthrop Middle/High School

Winthrop, MA

Winthrop’s new 970-student, 189,500 sf, combined Middle & High School exemplifies a growing trend within newly constructed school buildings: larger buildings, more outdoor space, and lower student enrollment. Winthrop’s decision after the feasibility study was to unite both schools into a single Middle/High School structure.

The LEED Gold® Certified building is sited along the coast on a peninsula within Massachusetts Bay.
The week prior to the Winthrop Town Meeting vote for project funding, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) released revised maps that placed the building more than 4-feet in elevation within the new 100-year floodplain. Base flood elevation of major concern was the construction costs of the re-design; Samiotes redesigned the grading and layout to meet the new base flood elevation (BFE) in one week. In the end, the increase in cost was less than one percent of the total budget and was within the construction contingency. The utility connections were designed to re-use a significant portion of the existing infrastructure, with a challenge on the stormwater management due to an existing culvert running through the site and retro-fitting / adding structures to meet water quality and flood plain issues.