Caelin Bragg
Advertising & Distribution Manager
Following a tumultuous back and forth with the Andover City Council, Butler will soon start their Andover project to prep for their departure of the 6000 building in 2020.
Butler’s lease for the 6000 building, which is connected to Andover High School, ends in the summer of 2020, and they will be required to leave as part of that. Roughly 50 classrooms, offices and service rooms are currently located in the 6000 building.
The current road map for the construction does take Butler beyond their deadline in 2020, but Krull says not all of the logistics have been worked out yet to get a clear answer.
“Part of the challenge is trying to figure out, because it’s a domino process, you’ve got to get this stuff cleared out of [Facilities Management] to free up that space and build classrooms, so you can move classrooms over from the 6000 building,” Krull said. “There are all these little interlocking pieces and how do you get that phased in the right way without totally disrupting classes and student services and all those kinds of things.”
Initial demolition of the current rooms in the south end of the 5000 building has already begun and will become the new home for the classrooms and offices from the 6000 building, and a new building is being planned on the south east end of the campus that will house Facilities Management, who are currently in the south end of the 5000 building.
Krull emphasized that this is not an expansion for Butler, but purely just a relocation of services from 6000 building; however, as part of the remodeling, a new science lab will be added for classes like chemistry and physics, and there will be a new meeting space that will hold up to 150 people, which would be open for the community to use as well.
“Everything that is happening in the 5000 building is to relocate all of the faculty and staff offices, the classrooms and the services on the north end of the high school,“ Krull said. “It’s to relocate all of that, essentially space for space. They’ll be configured differently of course.”
The new building being designed on the south east corner of the 5000 building location will have to go through the Andover Site Plan Review Committee for approval, which Krull suspects will happen sometime in March once Butler has everything finalized.
As of right now, there are no plans for the potential of moving the 9100 building on 21st and Andover Streets, but Krull said that the new construction will leave room for expanding the 5000 building if they ever decided to move the 9100 building.
