The Municipal Building Committee has asked for more time to draft final schematic designs and a budget for the renovation of Town Hall and Hildreth House, and has rescheduled its presentation to a joint session of the Selectmen and the capital and finance committees for Thursday, March 1.
The decision came last week after the committee met to review updated drawings and construction costs for the two buildings, and to prepare for a meeting with town boards that had been planned—and was then canceled—for Wednesday, Feb. 15, at Volunteers Hall in the library.
But having had less than 24 hours to look over more than 100 pages of drawings and spreadsheets, committee members as well as project manager John Sayre-Scibona of DTI and architect Drayton Fair of LLB Architects agreed they needed more time to review the parameters of a project whose costs now hover near $10 million.
"We're still in process," Fair said. "We have a number of options to consider, and we need to nail down which ones we're going to do."
There have been few changes to the design for Town Hall since the committee presented its preferred scheme to a packed public forum two weeks ago, but Hildreth House, the town's senior center, has been downsized. At the request of the committee, LLB Architects eliminated 1,000 square feet from the proposed Hildreth addition. The new design reduces the seating capacity of a planned dining hall from 100 seats to 74 seats, and leaves less space for a multifunction room, but allows for a future expansion if there is demand for more space.
Currently, according to the Council on Aging, fewer than 25 residents come to the Hildreth House for its weekly regular meals.
Drawings for the second floor of Town Hall continue to show an open floor plan with a stage-like area at the north end of the building that can be used for public events. The architects propose to remove the existing stage, but to preserve its stamped tin proscenium, moving it roughly four feet forward from its present location to create the sense of a space—a point of focus—for larger public events.
The latest designs for the two buildings now contain enough detail for LLB's cost estimator to begin calculating construction costs for the two projects. For Hildreth House, that number is $4.6 million; for Town Hall, $3.1 million. (See the accompanying table, which shows the breakdown of estimated costs for each building.)
But once fees, overrun contingencies, design, management, support services, furniture, and technology costs are added to the budget, the total amounts rise to roughly $4.3 million for Town Hall and $6 million for Hildreth.
Still, as Fair noted last week, a number of options remain for the committee—and ultimately the town—to decide.
In the case of Town Hall, LLB has prepared three options for the committee to consider. The first proposes to rebuild the stage area in upper Town Hall to support theatrical performances. The work would require the addition of a lift for handicapped access and would reduce the total seating capacity of the open meeting area. The estimated cost, $82,000, would most likely be funded by private donations. LLB and its cost estimator, Daedalus Projects, has also included options for a slate roof, at an additional construction cost of $150,000, and more parking spaces, which would cost an estimated $34,000.
Still to be determined is whether to use partitions to create spaces for smaller meetings on the second floor. So far, no satisfactory solution has been found.
As for Hildreth House, a compromise hammered out between Selectmen and other stakeholders last spring calls for its addition to be paid for with private donations. The estimated cost of construction for the addition is $2.8 million, or more than half the purely construction-related costs of renovating the entire building. Some of those costs will be assigned to the town, which has agreed to pay for renovations needed to bring the facility up to code as a senior center, but the committee has not yet determined what that amount will be. Last week, for example, Lucy Wallace, co-chair of the Council on Aging Board of Directors, argued that the kitchen in the new addition might be required for code compliance, in which case the town should pay for it.
"If you quote the numbers in these estimates," building committee member Doug Coots told the Press, "please be sure to emphasize how preliminary they are."
"I'd like to find a way to shave a few hundred thousand dollars off of these [construction] estimates," added building committee member Lou Russo.
"Now it's time to do 'value engineering,'" said building committee co-Chair Peter Jackson, who described the process the committee will follow over the next two weeks as a "deep dive" into the designs for the two buildings to look for ways to lower up-front and future costs.
At the meeting last week, for example, Eric Broadbent, energy committee liaison to the building committee, argued that by spending more to make the Town Hall and Hildreth as energy efficient as possible, the town would be able to reduce the heating and cooling equipment plants in the two buildings as well as the future costs of heating and cooling them.