No modular:

North Stonington officials decide against a modular construction option for renovating the town’s schools.

North Stonington — The committee charged with developing a plan to renovate the town’s schools had been mulling permanent modular construction since January, but after architect Rusty Malik presented initial estimates for modular construction Monday, members voted against examining it further and sought other ways to save money.

Consultant Rich Labrie, who worked on a permanent modular construction of a school in East Windsor, was invited to Monday’s meeting to discuss how that project was designed and approved.

Labrie said that there were a number of unique conditions that made permanent modular appealing to East Windsor: the project had a higher state reimbursement, the town didn’t need to borrow as much money and the building is a single-story construction.

“It will be an easier sell,” Labrie said to the committee, to pass a project with traditional construction methods rather than modular.

Permanent modular buildings are constructed in facto- ries and shipped directly to the building location, where they can be more quickly assembled than traditional construction. Potential savings are realized as a function of time: factories can construct the steel structure of the building at the same time the site work is being done.

Most of the buildings the committee had looked at had a similar lifespan to traditionally-constructed buildings.

The committee has already visited one modular construction school in Newton, Mass., but members were not pleased with the building, which Vice Chairman Jay Peterson described as “two notches” above portable modular buildings.

Based on some preliminary estimates he received from a permanent modular building company, Malik said modular would decrease the project cost by about $ 230,000. The cost of building the middle- high school would actually go down by about $ 1 million, however, since modular buildings are built as units, Malik said the shared walls absorb some space and increase the square footage of the project, lowering the state reimbursement.

While the savings would increase if the total square footage were reduced, Malik cautioned that “there are a lot of little things in there that we have to be cautious of” and it would all depend on the quality of materials that are compatible with the modular construction.

Committee Chairman Mike Urgo said he was disappointed with the potential savings in the modular building process. He suggested that the committee look into reducing the square footage of the building by around 2,200 square feet to maximize the state reimbursement for the building project. Currently, the project is estimated to cost $38.17 million, which will cost the town $21.21 million after the state reimbursement.

“I don’t think saving less than two percent of the cost ... is worth the risk,” ad hoc school building commmitee member Mike Osborne said.