LOWELL — Several bombshells dropped during the Thursday meeting of the School Building Committee for the Lowell High School renovation and rebuilding project.
Skanska Project Manager Jim Dowd told the body that the renovation of the 1922 building is at least four months behind schedule due to newly discovered structural issues that may cause the entire project to run over its $381 million budget.
“Council and some other folks have been informed that in the basement of the 1922 building, we encountered a very large problem with the slab,” he said.
Dowd told the committee that when Suffolk Construction started cutting concrete squares into the slab, which is the typical methodology before digging trenches to lay pipe and other equipment, the space below was between 1 to 3 inches hollow.
Additionally, engineers found some areas where the slab was only 2 inches versus the typical 4 inches thick, which Dowd called “very concerning.”
“There were no signs of this,” he said. “The floor had not sagged in any locations. There was no cracking. Nothing to indicate that this was hollow underneath.”
Engineers have recommended that Suffolk remove the entire northern end of the basement floor closest to French Street, which runs along Kirk Street to roughly Paige Street, and install reinforcing micropiles before pouring a new slab.
The condition of the southern half of the 1922 basement slab, which runs along Kirk Street to roughly Lee Street, will be examined in the next couple of weeks to see what’s underneath.
“We anticipate the same condition,” Dowd said. “We don’t have all of the information right now as this is a developing issue.”
The four-phased rebuilding/renovation project was approved in 2016 and broke ground in 2020. Phases 1 and 2 are complete. The current Phase 3 involves the gut renovation of both the 1980 and 1922 buildings, and was scheduled to be finished this August. Now that date has been pushed back at least four months to December.
The impact on the learning environment is substantial as the classrooms above the southern end of the building were scheduled to move into the finished northern space in August.
Now, those students will have to stay put until the first slab replacement is completed in December. That in turn will delay the start of the fourth and final phase that includes the renovation of the back half of the 1922 building and the renovation of the 1892 Coburn Hall behind it, closest to the Masonic Temple. That completion date has been pushed back from July 2026 to December 2026.
City Manager Tom Golden confirmed the condition of the slab to the committee.
“The council, myself and the assistant city managers, we were on site the 15th of February,” he said. “We had the opportunity to see what I would refer to as erosion.”
The slab issues are not due to water seeping from the canal or leaky pipes as much as from poor material support, said Perkins Eastman architect Joe Drown.
“The soil below the slab has subsided and created these voids,” he said.
Ripping out, reinforcing and repouring the 1922 basement foundation will also have significant financial impacts.
The slab issue comes on the heels of “unforeseen” and “considerable” asbestos that was found in the 1922 building last fall. As a result, more than $400,000 in increased costs were deducted from the city’s construction contingency, and the opening of the renovated auditorium was delayed from June 2025 to early 2026.
The cost of remediating the slab will come out of the remaining construction contingency funds. A construction contingency is money set aside to pay for change orders from new requests or unforeseen construction requirements. The overall budget included $21.2 million of which Dowd said is down to $2 million.
“We still haven’t gotten into the 1892 building,” he said. “There’s a possibility that we could run into as many unforeseen conditions in the 1892 as we have unfortunately in the 1922. It’s the nature of renovations.”
The project manager also said that Phase 4 work has already been bought and contracted out by Suffolk, leaving no value engineering savings available without cutting into the program and violating the Massachusetts School Building Authority contract agreement.
The MSBA will not provide further reimbursement beyond the project funding agreement of $252 million of the $381 million cost, and any increases to the project budget not addressed by the contingency will be borne by the residents of the city.
“With the latest items that have occurred, I will say there is a possibility that we will go over budget,” Dowd said. “We are doing everything in our power to avoid that, but there is a fair possibility.”
The committee voted unanimously to change its meeting schedule from bimonthly to monthly. The next meeting is scheduled for Thursday, April 3, at 6 p.m., in the Mayor’s Reception Room of City Hall.
At that time, the project team will present an analysis of the condition of the southern slab, as well as timeline and budget scenarios on the entire slab replacement project to the committee.