Members of the Municipal Building Committee got back to work last week on reducing the size of plans for Town Hall, after Selectmen last Tuesday rejected the committee's first recommendation. At a work session on Friday, the committee examined two types of design schemes: one that preserves open space on the second floor and one with fixed walls and ceilings. After a weekend email from the chair of the Board of Selectmen, however, one of the building committee co-chairs now says the committee will throw out the latter approach.
“If you keep chopping 5
feet off here, 10 feet there, you’re not getting
a whole lot back.”
Lou Russo
Barely 48 hours after their dramatic encounter with Selectmen last Tuesday, the five members of the Municipal Building Committee met around the large Town Hall meeting room table Friday morning, with fresh schematic drawings, tracing paper, and a yellow contractor's calculator before them. Also present were Selectman Bill Johnson and School Committee chair and capital committee member Keith Cheveralls, who had come to observe the deliberations.
On Tuesday that week, a majority of the committee had voted in favor of a medium-sized addition to Town Hall known as Scheme 2, with a promise to trim its size, and thereby its cost, to approach that of a smaller addition known as Scheme 1. But Selectmen Peter Warren, Ron Ricci, and Johnson had been unwilling to accept the recommendation of the panel, especially after hearing that two of its members—including co-Chair Wade Holtzman—wished to retract the recommendation and had asked for more time to consider it.
In the series of motions and counter-motions that followed, Selectmen Chair Marie Sobalvarro ultimately mustered a 3-2 majority to instruct the committee to do exactly what it had originally proposed: come up with a downsized Scheme 2 and bring it back to Selectmen in February. Same result, but with more time.
"The intent," building committee co-chair Peter Jackson told the Press, "is to create a scheme that is smaller than the Scheme 2 that was presented in the Jan. 5 [Municipal Building Committee] meeting. How close we get to Scheme 1 remains to be seen."
At the Friday meeting, building committee member Doug Coots, the practicing architect in the group, led the committee into a discussion of four proposals for reducing the size of Scheme 2, two prepared by Coots and Jackson; one developed by committee member Lou Russo, whose firm renovated the Westford town hall, and co-Chair Wade Holtzman; and a fourth submitted by LLB Architects, the committee's design firm.
Coots began with the two drawings for Scheme 2 that he and Jackson had prepared. The first, which Coots dubbed Scheme A, proposed to open up the second floor for meetings large and small by subdividing its area using moveable, sound-confining dividers. The second approach–Scheme B–proposed permanent meeting rooms and offices on the second floor, with fixed walls and ceilings.
About Scheme B, Coots told the committee, "If we're going to subdivide it, then I feel we should embrace that [decision] boldly. We shouldn't nibble around the edges of it and treat it as if it weren't a serious project."
By taking this approach, he said, "we actually start to optimize, maximize the existing footprint of the building."
Later, Coots told the Press that he had felt obligated to test the feasibility and cost of "fitting out" upper Town Hall because some Selectmen and members of town committees, including the Municipal Building Committee, had asked for it.
The committee then discussed the Russo and Holtzman sketch, which, though differing in its details, resembled Coots's Scheme B, but with less space removed from the addition. After some discussion, Russo and Coots agreed that their two plans were close and that the best ideas from each should be combined.
Finally, the group reviewed a fresh design from LLB, which offered a compromise by preserving some open meeting space on the second floor but also adding some permanent offices and meeting rooms.
In all four schemes, town government offices and space for public business are located on the first floor. Space for meetings, large and small, as well as space for volunteer work and files, is located on the second. Schemes A and B both cut five feet from earlier drawings of the Scheme 2 addition, thereby eliminating an estimated 430 square feet from the plan. But Coots warned that what ultimately "drives the dimension of the addition is the spaces you need for an elevator, a corridor, and a stair."
Committee member Chris Cutler noted that if the addition got too much shorter, it would begin to look "chunky."
"You're putting a bunch of things in [the addition]," Russo agreed. "If you keep chopping 5 feet off here, 10 feet there, you're not getting a whole lot back."
Russo added, "There's a point where there's an optimal size for this." He said the committee was close to it.
As discussion of the four approaches wound down, Coots proposed that the committee ask LLB to refine schemes A and B as well as the compromise plan devised by LLB architect Chris Ladd. Russo agreed, but asked that the relative cost of each scheme be included in the work. He speculated that the numbers would not be that far apart. With three schemes for the forum to choose from, said Coots, "Then it becomes more like buying a car where all three cars have the same price on them."
No vote was taken, but the committee adjourned expecting that co-chair Jackson would either hand carry or transmit the three annotated sketches to LLB that afternoon.
"I'm very happy with this meeting," declared Russo.
"This is the first time we've talked about design," said Cutler, a homebuilder.
Asked by Coots if he was satisfied with the process, co-chair Holtzman said, "I don't think we've had a lot of disagreement." Selectman Johnson and School Board chair Cheveralls said they were pleased with willingness of the committee to look at other alternatives.
By Monday this week, however, the situation had shifted once again. Over the weekend, Board of Selectman Chair Sobalvarro, having gotten wind of the building committee's work, reminded Jackson and Coots that Selectmen had not authorized the building committee to spend money on plans that did not accord with Article 17 of the last annual Town Meeting or the statement of intent Selectmen adopted shortly before that Town Meeting. Sobalvarro told the Press on Sunday that she had written to Coots and Jackson to say that the statement of intent precluded any plan that would permanently remove performance or community space from upper Town Hall, as Plan B and the LLB compromise would do.
The committee, according to Sobalvarro, needs to remain true to the mandate of Town Meeting that the final design "serve town government offices, meeting space, civic and community space, and other uses as appropriate," as well as the statement of intent, which pledges that renovations to Town Hall will "not preclude other performance or community uses." The committee is free, however, to make its own rough comparisons provided they are done on its own time.
On Tuesday, two town residents, Keith Turner and Stu Sklar, appeared before the Selectmen during public comment to argue forcefully for Sobalvarro's position and to chastise so-called "fiscal conservatives" for impeding the work of the building committee (see related story).
"I thought the job of the Selectmen was to implement what the town wants," said Turner. "What people are saying is they want community space."
Sklar announced that he had posted an online petition for residents to sign in support of civic space in Town Hall.
"There will be support," he said.
Asked how the committee would respond and whether it would continue to explore a Plan B type "fit-out," Jackson told the Press, "We're not going to pursue it as a new scheme." However, he said the committee would work up some very rough cost comparisons on its own, using some industry metrics for the cost per square foot.
Jackson said that when the committee presents an update at Volunteers Hall in the Library on Jan. 26, it will present a refinement of Scheme 2—or as some call it, "Scheme 1.x"—for Town Hall and refinements to the preferred plan for Hildreth House. Jackson said, "We're done with choices of schemes. We'll be looking for comments on the selected plans for both buildings."
Residents can continue to email their suggestions and critiques to MBCMailit@gmail.com.
The Press asked co-chair Holtzman and committee member Russo to comment on Sobalvarro's course correction, but both declined, though Holtzman said he expected Selectmen and the capital and finance committees to all weigh in.
The building committee was scheduled to meet next on Thursday evening, Jan. 19, at 7 p.m. in Hildreth House to hear from LLB and prepare for its Jan. 26 forum.