Overview:
Royalston has received a state Green Communities grant of nearly $190,000 to help pay for upgrades to the former Raymond School. The grant will be used to install a new heat pump system for the building, which will house municipal offices currently located at Whitney Hall. The project was supported by voters at the 2024 Annual Town Meeting, and the borrowing was approved at a Special Town Election later that year.
ROYALSTON – The town has landed a state Green Communities grant of nearly $190,000 to help pay for upgrades to the former Raymond School.
Once the work is done, the school, built in 1938 by the Works Progress Administration, will house municipal offices currently located at Whitney Hall in South Royalston.
At the 2024 Annual Town Meeting, voters supported a nearly $700,000 Proposition 2½ debt exclusion to fund the project. The borrowing was approved at a Special Town Election later that year.
This spring, Town Energy Committee member Tom Musco, working with the Montachusett Regional Planning Commission, wrote the application for a $190,000 Green Communities grant for a new heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) system for the building.
“It’s $185,000,” Musco told the Athol Daily News. “When we budgeted for the work – for the debt exclusion – we didn’t consider getting any grants. We asked the Town Meeting for what we thought it was going to cost if we had to pay for everything ourselves, and the Town Meeting approved $699,000 for the project.”
The grant, according to Musco, would allow the town to spend less of its own money on the project.
“The new HVAC system will be a heat pump system because that’s what Green Communities requires,” Musco explained. “It’s for the whole building, but the priority is for the main floor, which is what we’re renovating. We’re not renovating the basement.”
Musco said Green Communities monies have been used at the Raymond School in recent years. He noted the grant received by the town when it joined the Green Communities Program in 2018, some $126,000, was used to insulate portions of the building. He explained that upon joining the program, communities automatically receive their first grant. After that, all grants are awarded on a competitive basis.
Musco, who serves on both the Energy and Building committees in Royalston, said substantial preparations have been completed by the Department of Public Works.
“We’ve gutted the main floor and we’ve put in a new sub-floor for that whole floor,” said Musco. “Eighty-percent of the framing for the walls at the front are in place now, and what’s left will be done very shortly.”
Now that school is back in session, said Musco, students from the Montachusett Regional Vocational Technical School’s electrical program will be “coming in to do all of the rough wiring.” He added that the rough plumbing work has been completed by residents of Royalston who have volunteered their time and skill, “and then Monty Tech is going to do the finish plumbing when it’s time to do that.”
Musco said it’s hoped town offices can move into the building sometime next spring.
The decision to move town offices to the Raymond Building followed a study undertaken by Keen Independent Research of Phoenix, Arizona, which stated the cost of renovating Whitney Hall would start at around $4.6 million. Whitney Hall was built in 1905 to serve as a school and community center.
Greg Vine can be reached at gvineadn@gmail.com.