In meetings this week, the Hildreth House Improvement Committee (HHIC) and the Council on Aging (COA) voted to go forward with seeking funds to renovate the aging Hildreth House, which serves as Harvard’s senior center.
Armed with a new set of scaled back schematic design drawings from LLB Architects as well as cost estimates for a single-phase or two-phase project, the HHIC will return to the Board of Selectmen this fall to recommend moving forward with the renovation. A request for funding will also be submitted to the Capital Planning and Investment Committee. While both the HHIC and COA agreed that they are committed to doing the entire project, they also agreed that at the very least, they intend to request funding for the safety and accessibility portion of the project at Town Meeting next spring.
Three phases
Last fall, when HHIC presented a $3.7 million version of the project to CPIC and the BOS, they received negative responses from both groups. The committee then altered its design to lower costs and devised a scheme to break the work into three steps, or “phases.”
The first two phases consist mainly of safety and accessibility renovations, such as driveway and parking lot improvements and the addition of a lift. In a meeting on August 11, HHIC voted to combine phases one and two, given that a large portion of the work in both was site work. The third phase consists of kitchen and bathroom renovations, as well as an addition for a large dining room and multi-purpose room.
This summer, HHIC asked LLB Architects and Owner’s Project Manager (OPM) John Sayre-Scibona to estimate the cost of each phase as well as the cost of doing the entire project in a single phase. Not surprisingly, the cost of phasing the project was estimated to be approximately $600,000 higher, a roughly 17 percent increase in the price tag. The estimate for phases one and two combined is $1.6 million, the estimate for phase three is $2.6 million, and the estimate for doing all the work at once is $3.6 million. The figures include both construction and soft costs.
A difficult question
HHIC and COA members are now left with a difficult question. Should they recommend that the entire project be done at once, given the cost savings of that approach? Or should they recommend completing the safety and accessibility phases of the project first, and begin phase three a year or two later?
There is a consensus among members that the entire project needs to be done, but there is concern about a lack of support from CPIC, the BOS, and the town. Lucy Wallace, BOS liaison to HHIC, said, “There’s a compelling reason to do this, but it’s hard to rally any muscle around it. It’s hard to get the town to see what’s up here.” HHIC member Fran Nickerson added that until people become seniors and start looking to Hildreth House to provide programs, they don’t see the need for renovations. COA has until Sept. 26 to submit a request for funding to CPIC for fiscal 2016.
In other news, the invitation to bid on replacement windows for Hildreth House has been published. The deadline for bids is 2 p.m. Sept. 18. HHIC member Dave Vannicola reported a proposed completion date for the windows of Dec. 15. The next HHIC meeting is scheduled for Sept. 8.
