Project

An inner-ring suburban town with almost 60,000 people, Manchester is typical in that it has lots of old municipal buildings. Buckley opened in 1954, part of a post war boom that also included construction of Bowers Elementary in 1950 and Keeney Elementary in 1956 (these being the two  schools scheduled to be renovated to ‘net zero’ right after Buckley is finished).

In June 2019, residents approved through referendum a $93 million package that included $81 million to renovate Buckley and two other elementary schools (Bowers and Keeney), with town officials bumping up projected construction costs by 5 percent to reach that NZE target.

Figure the annual energy savings at Buckley at about $100,000 per year and that’s another $2 million over 20 years, with comparable savings projected for Bowers and Keeney, which are also slated to be net zero energy when they are renovated.