New Essex Elementary Comes Into View

The building’s exterior features masonry that has the look of grey, weathered wood and reddish terracotta shingles that have the texture and character of traditional wood shingles but lack the required maintenance. ”

For the first time, local residents can begin to see what a new Essex Elementary School might actually look like.

At a community presentation Tuesday, the Essex Elementary School Building Committee and its architects unveiled the preliminary design for a 72,400-square-foot school to replace the 69-year-old building on Story Street.  The three-story school would be designed for 250 students and constructed on the existing property while students continue attending the old school.  If the project stays on schedule, it will open in 2030.

It’s a significant step for a project that, until now, has largely been about studies, enrollment projections, state requirements and alternatives.  Now there are floor plans, site plans and renderings. And later this fall there should be something considerably more consequential: a price.

The project grew out of a 2022 facilities study that concluded Essex Elementary had exceeded its useful life and identified roughly $9 million in work that would be necessary simply to maintain the existing building.  Essex then entered the Mass. School Building Authority (MSBA) process, which opens the district to receive up to 30% of the project’s total cost in reimbursement if it chooses to replace the school building rather than continuing to invest in an aging facility.

Voters approved funding in 2025 for the $1.5 million feasibility study to analyze cost of renovation vs. replacement.  The study also looked into alternative sites and explored configurations to consolidate some elementary grades at Manchester Memorial.  In the end, a new facility at the existing EES site was the favored option. 

With Tuesday’s presentation, that favored option has come into focus.

Lessons from Memorial School

The new building would be constructed largely in the area currently occupied by an EES parking lot, which would allowing the existing school to remain open during construction and avoiding temporary classrooms.  After students move into the new building, the old school would come down and remaining site work would be completed. 

The layout also avoids the property’s wetlands and pond and creates separate circulation for buses, parent drop-off and preschool drop-off.

If this sounds familiar, it should.  Five years ago, Manchester opened its new $52.2 million Memorial Elementary School after navigating many of the same questions thst Essex faces today: how to build on a constrained, environmentally sensitive site without displacing students; how to design a school that won’t become obsolete as teaching changes; and how to maximize MSBA reimbursement while keeping the local taxpayer share under control.  Memorial ultimately opened on time and slightly under budget.

There is another connection.  Essex is working with Dore + Whittier as owner’s project manager and JCJ Architecture as architect—the same firms that performed those roles at Memorial.

Tuesday’s presentation made clear that they’re carrying many lessons to EES. One is flexibility.  When Memorial was designed, JCJ’s Lauren Braren described the fundamental challenge as designing a school expected to last 50 years when nobody could predict how technology or education would change.  So, Memorial was designed with spaces that could flex as needs changes.

That philosophy is all over the Essex design.

Classrooms would be organized into “learning neighborhoods,” with breakout areas for small-group instruction and flexible learning.  Kindergarten through Grade 2 would occupy one level, with older students above.  The proposed EES building’s central gathering area—similar conceptually to Memorial’s “Hub” and the ME Middle High School’s “Huddle”—would serve as both circulation and usable gathering space.

The design also borrows one of Memorial’s cleverer tricks: what the Manchester team nicknamed the “cafegymatorium.”  Movable partitions allow the cafeteria, gymnasium, and auditorium functions to work independently or together, essentially getting multiple uses from some of a school’s largest spaces.  At Memorial, the resulting space was deliberately designed to accommodate not only students, but community events, elections and forums.

Essex would similarly separate the academic portion of the building from its community spaces, allowing classrooms to be secured after hours while the gym, library/media center, art room, cafeteria, and stage remain available for community use.  The gym itself would be a full-size basketball court comparable to Memorial’s.

A sense of “Essex” in the design

There are differences, of course.  Most notably, architects said they’ve trying hard to make the building look and feel like Essex.

As a result, the building’s exterior features masonry that has the look of grey, weathered wood and reddish terracotta shingles that have the texture and character of traditional wood shingles but lack the required maintenance.  The colors and textures would continue inside.  One designer described the goal simply: “We wanted it to be timeless,” with the design team drawing inspiration from buildings, colors and shipbuilding tradition in Essex.  In fact, the architects pointed to the building’s main, arched central dome and said it was inspired by the shape of a boat.

Still, disguising the scale of a 72,000-square-foot building isn’t easy.

“What makes it feel so big?” one resident asked of Tuesday looking at the rendering of its tall, arched entrance. Is there anything that can be done to make the structure feel smaller?  “It makes me feel like I’m walking into an REI,” he said.

Architects acknowledged the concern and said building size is largely dictated by the MSBA formula, but he said that materials, landscaping, trees and continued refinement can soften the building, especially as it settles into its surroundings.

Essex Planning Board Chair and EES Building Committee member Lisa O’Donnell said the placement of the building along Story Street also means there aren’t residences directly opposite the proposed three-story portion.

Enrollment also generated questions.  Would the building accommodate potential growth in future enrollment?  Consultants from W+D said the MSBA—not MERSD—establishes the project’s design enrollment, in this case 250 students. 

But Superintendent Pam Beaudoin said Tuesday that flexible spaces could accommodate perhaps another 30 students before the building became pressed for space.  She added that MSBA also requires architects to identify how a school could physically expand in the future.

Energy efficiency is another area where five years makes a surprisingly big difference.

Memorial was designed as a highly efficient building for its time, but state building codes and heat-pump technology have advanced considerably since then.  The all-electric Essex school is targeting an Energy Use Intensity of about 25 compared with an estimated 40 to 50 at Memorial, said Eric Haggstrom, AIA, LEED AP, JCJ Architecture’s director of sustainability.  Better windows, insulation, airtightness and mechanical systems would help qualify the project for additional MSBA reimbursement.

That echoes another lesson from Memorial: some expensive building systems pay back over time.  Manchester’s school, for instance, incorporated a substantial underground stormwater system to protect neighboring wetlands and the Lincoln Street municipal well—an added construction expense judged worthwhile for the 55,000=sf building that directly abuts Sawmill Brook.

“Our goal with this project is to make it affordable and maintainable,” the design team told residents Tuesday.

Next step: bringing project costs to voters

Which brings us to the number everyone eventually wants to know: cost.

There isn’t one yet, but that’s up next in the process.

The schematic designs presented this week establish reliable construction budget, determine which costs qualify for MSBA reimbursement and ultimately calculate what Essex and Manchester taxpayers would be asked to finance.  The Memorial experience nearly a decade ago illustrates how consequential that state participation can be: of its $52.2 million budget, the local share was just under $40 million after up to $12.2 million in MSBA grants, with additional reimbursement expected for its environmental certification.

The current schedule anticipates bringing the Essex project to Town Meetings in November, followed by debt-exclusion votes in December.  If approved, final design and bidding would continue through 2027, followed by roughly two to three years of construction and a targeted student move-in around summer or fall 2030.

Tuesday was an important milestone, but hardly the last one.  After years spent analyzing whether Essex needs a new elementary school and what kind of building should replace the old one, residents finally have something tangible to consider.