Following a well-attended public forum, the town's Municipal Building Committee last week asked its architects to return Thursday with more options and preliminary cost estimates for three of its schemes for the renovation of Town Hall and Hildreth House. But although the committee had planned to settle on one preferred concept for each building at its next meeting, an animated discussion on Tuesday evening among Selectmen could alter a tentative consensus among the building committee members.
At the forum, held last Wednesday evening in Volunteers Hall at the town library and attended by more than 60 residents, architect Drayton Fair of LLB Architects of Rhode Island unveiled four conceptual designs for the renovation of Town Hall and another three for the expansion of Hildreth House.
The first package proposed ways to accommodate the estimated 6,000 to 8,000 square feet of space that a renovated Town Hall is said to need for meeting rooms, offices, storage, and public spaces, as well as new stairs, restrooms, and an elevator. The second package contained designs for the 8,000 square feet the Council on Aging says it needs for senior center programs and offices. (View the proposed schemes for both buildings on the Harvard Press website, www.harvardpress.com.)
Among the Town Hall plans, only two came close to providing the total floor space requested by town officials, volunteers, and residents. All three schemes for Hildreth House meet 100 percent of its program requirements.
"It's a bit like trying to put 10 pounds of stuff into a five-pound bag," said Selectmen Chair Marie Sobalvarro this week of the Town Hall plans. But Selectman Bill Johnson said he wasn't convinced LLB was working as hard as it could to "solve the problem."
For the moment, any controversy that surrounds the initial sketches for the two buildings is confined to Town Hall. Discussions of Hildreth House have so far remained above the fray. The drawing known as Scheme 3, with its promise of a sunlit patio, an expansive view of the town from its front porch, and a new dining hall and kitchen, is the clear favorite.
In the case of Town Hall, the residents who attended the forum and spoke up, as well as the few who have emailed critiques to the building committee, clearly favor the concepts known as Scheme 1 and Scheme 2. Those two schemes were also the choice of the building committee when it met last week, a consensus that emerged from a two hour roundtable discussion in which each member offered a personal appraisal of each of the four approaches.
Scheme 1 and Scheme 2 both propose to tear down the existing addition to the historic 1872 center of town government and replace it with a modern, up-to-code, energy efficient addition, one with square corners.
The two designs differ largely in the size of the addition they propose and in the location of the building's main entrance. Scheme 1 proposes a "medium-sized" addition of 2,500 square feet, and it moves the main entrance to Town Hall to the north end of the building (the end opposite the current main entrance). Scheme 2 proposes a larger addition of 3,800 square feet and moves the entrance to the west side of the building (the one that faces the town vault). Both schemes preserve the present south-facing façade as a ceremonial entrance.
Neither design includes a place for the town vault, which resides in the old fire station on the west side of the building and which is precluded from consideration by the statement of intent Selectmen voted on before last year's annual Town Meeting. But both schemes include a large open meeting space on the second floor, which itself is a point of contention for some who think it should be subdivided to provide more space for committees and boards.
The two remaining designs proposed by LLB, Schemes 3 and 4, did not draw much support from forum attendees, and they were discarded in favor of the first two by most of the building committee. Scheme 3, which has come to be known as "the pod," proposes to add a stand-alone addition to the building to house all of the elements necessary to bring it up to code. But that approach would violate a provision of the statement of intent, which precludes such a structure. Scheme 4, the final design, proposes to renovate the existing addition to Town Hall and keep all other work entirely within the existing building footprint, but Scheme 4, as initially conceived, is the worst at accommodating town programs.
Among members of the building committee, Lou Russo was the one member most reluctant to give up completely on Scheme 4, and he requested that LLB estimate the cost of renovating the current extension, in addition to providing more refined designs and relative costs for Schemes 1 and 2. Russo said he was no fan of the structure, and his builder's intuition told him it would be less expensive to tear it down and start over, but he wanted confirmation that his assessment was right.
At their meeting Tuesday, it became clear that a majority of the Selectmen would have made Scheme 4 their first choice (see related story). Peter Warren, Ron Ricci and Bill Johnson said they were "disappointed" by the options the architects had provided and were concerned the building committee and LLB were not fully committed to the statement of intent.
Scheme 2, Ricci said, was a non-starter because the proposed size of its addition went well beyond the scope permitted by the statement of intent. Warren, Ricci and Johnson said that only Scheme 4 came close to adhering to the constraints of that document, though all three said they could live with Scheme 1 if the additional space was used only to add the elements needed to bring the building up to code, as spelled out by the statement of intent.
Scheme 3, however, was dismissed as "quirky."
"I would like the Municipal Building Committee to give very clear, unfiltered feedback to the architects," Johnson said. "At least three of us here clearly think that [the statement of intent] is an important constraint on the project."
The building committee needed to tell the architects, he said, that "we would like to see them focus on how we can maximize Scenario 4 or 1 to achieve the best program." He added, "Go back in and look at tradeoffs."
Those instructions may be at odds with the building committee's tight plan for delivering near-final schematic designs for Town Hall and Hildreth House to the Selectmen by Jan. 26. According to the schedule being orchestrated by John Sayre-Scibona, onsite project manager for the effort, the building committee was supposed to settle on a preferred design for each building at its next meeting on Thursday, Dec. 22.
In the meantime, the building committee and the Selectmen want to hear from residents. Residents should email their comments to MBCMailit@gmail.com. There is no deadline for such feedback, Johnson said this week. "Tell us what you think."
Readers can see the complete Wednesday evening presentation by LLB at www.harvard.ma.us/Pages/HarvardMA_BComm/Municipal/11-1214%20Presentation%20Final%20.pdf.
Residents will have an opportunity to review final conceptual plans for the two buildings at a public hearing on Jan. 26.