AGAWAM, Mass. (WGGB/WSHM) - Construction on the new Agawam High School began in earnest only about a year ago, after voters overwhelmingly approved its funding in June of 2024. Already the building dwarfs the one it will soon replace. Now, we’re taking you inside with an exclusive look at the multi-million-dollar project that’s set to welcome students in less than 7 months.

With a price tag of about $230 million dollars, the future home of the Agawam Brownies is easily the largest, most costly municipal project in town history. It’s one Agawam Mayor Chris Johnson said is long overdue — and sorely needed, “our existing high school was built in 1955, so it just turned 71 years old. It needed tremendous amounts of updates, and the difficulty is to make those updates to keep it up to current code it would have actually cost more money to bring the current high school up to code than to build a new high school.”

Because the state’s providing roughly $100 million towards the new school, the cost for Agawam taxpayers works out to around $130 million.

Here’s an exclusive look at what that means so far, as the project is currently on time and on budget. This video, from April 2025 showed the very beginning stages of construction, and little more than a year later, the massive, 60-foot-tall outline of phase 1, as the community wing of the new school nears completion.

In no small part due to the 100 or more workers on site, 12 hours a day, 6 to 7 days a week — and the immense amount of forward planning that goes into getting all the materials and equipment.

“My project manager he gets me what I need, when I need it and we just put the pieces together,” said Mike Sarnelli of the Fontaine Brothers. Which is a simple way of saying, the crews from Fontaine Brothers, the construction manager on the project, are making amazing progress.

So much so, we were invited in to see for ourselves, “this space here, this is the cafeteria. Two stories. Windows both stories. Up there, stairs, we’ll go up but you’ll see there’s a walk that goes around. Two story auditorium. This is the base of the auditorium and there’s seating up on the second level as well. We went with a 2-story auditorium Wow. So, there will be like a balcony. A mezzanine? Yup.”

These expansive spaces, and there are plenty - are due to a feature the current shool doesn’t have: a second floor, “In front of us the media center, what used to be known as the library. This is the media center. This area you see here – this is like a café. It overlooks the cafeteria so students can come up with their food and eat.”

Something else, the new school features that’s innovative, these geothermal pipes in what’s to be the maintenance and utility area. Once completed, the 235,000 square foot building won’t rely on any fossil fuel. However, it will be relying on a concept called academic pods — a design feature meant to help students academically and logistically.

“The concept is rather than have ‘this is the science wing, and this is the English wing’… they’re all integrated together into a pod,” as Mayor Johnson explained, there will be three pods in all, designed into the yet-to-be built academic building, and linked to the community wing by a covered walkway, “that’s the connection over to the academic wing when it gets constructed. It’ll be there,” Mayor Johnson said.

Which is part of the next, or second phase, classrooms going up in place of the old gyms after they’re demolished — and replaced with perhaps the most impressive area of this current building site.

It’s the first and only collegiate size gym ever built in an Agawam Public School — a massive open space on the second level, and located right next to another, regulation high school size gym.

New facilities that reflect the vision and philosophy of the entire project, to create a bigger, brighter, and more advanced home for the Agawam Brownies, current and upcoming.

“It’s designed for modern education. What the teaching techniques are today and into the future. And also, to have that technology built in — or baked into the building as well,” Mayor Johnson said during the ongoing construction, students will not be placed in temporary, mobile classrooms. Instead, they’ll be transitioned to the new high school in stages, with full occupancy expected by fall of 2028.

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