April 9 COVID-19 update: Wellwood construction to begin

Community members will soon begin to see activity at Wellwood Middle School as contractors start work on the final phase of the Fayetteville-Manlius School District’s 2017 voter-approved capital project.

The district’s law firm received approval on April 6 from Empire State Development, the state’s Department of Economic Development, for the school district to move forward with its planned construction at Wellwood. 

Construction personnel who will be working on site will be responsible for maintaining appropriate social distance and complying with state Department of Health (DOH) guidance and directives for maintaining a clean and safe work environment. 

The district’s project manager also will be on site overseeing construction, as well as working with the contractors in order to ensure that they have amended their safety plans to include the requisite DOH guidance.

Wellwood is the district’s oldest building, with portions dating back to 1933. Construction will include a 15,000-square-foot addition and new main entrance facing Fayetteville Elementary School, creation of a new, enlarged parking lot in front of the addition, new athletic fields and renovations to existing classrooms, including asbestos abatement and infrastructure upgrades.

Since the governor closed schools statewide through at least April 29 to mitigate COVID-19 spread, the district is taking advantage of Wellwood being closed to students and staff to have contractors begin to work on the improvements, including asbestos abatement projects that had originally been planned to take place during the next two summers. 

In March, the F-M Board of Education approved bids in the amount of $24.9 million for Wellwood’s portion of the $45.2 million total project, which includes an addition at Enders Road Elementary, which was completed in September, and a renovation of F-M High School’s bathrooms and library media center that students and staff began using in November. The project also includes energy efficiency improvements district wide. 

Continued communications

The district will continue to update the community via the district website with any new information and frequently asked questions.

Any time-sensitive, critical information will be shared via the district’s SchoolMessenger notification system, which sends email, text message and phone call notifications, depending upon how parents subscribed to the system.

More COVID-19 information and previous F-M COVID-19 communications