“Once more into the fray” came to mind as five members of the Hildreth House Improvement Committee (HHIC) pulled their chairs up to the table at the Board of Selectmen meeting on September 23 to present their latest plan to renovate and expand the Hildreth House.
The original plan, presented last fall, failed to win the support of the BOS and the Capital Planning and Investment Committee. The HHIC spent the past year working with LLB Architects to cut costs and divide the project into two phases–the first for safety and accessibility renovations, and the second for additional program space.
This time, the board was more receptive to HHIC’s latest plans. When the presentation was complete, Chairman Stu Sklar asked for time to “digest it,” promising to bring it up for discussion and a vote in a future meeting.
Safety and accessibility first
The proposed first phase of the plan includes improvements to the parking area, wheelchair accessibility to all first floor entrances, a handicapped accessible restroom on the second floor, and a lift to the second floor. “It is simply inexcusable that fully half of the senior center, including staff offices, the computer lab, and the only place to have a private consultation is not accessible to anyone who can’t climb stairs,” said HHIC Co-Chair Connie Larrabee. Phase two includes a renovated, code-compliant kitchen and an addition that will contain a dining room on the first floor and a multipurpose room above it. The estimated cost of phase one is $1.6 million if work begins in 2015. The estimated cost of phase two is $2.6 million if work begins in 2017. If both phases were done as a single project, the estimated cost is $3.6 million, $600,000 less than the two-phased approach.
Selectman Leo Blair brought up a discussion that had taken place at a Municipal Affordable Housing Trust meeting a few nights before, in which that group discussed their enthusiasm for a plan involving the development of senior housing on the Hildreth property which could provide some amount of funding for Hildreth House renovations. Wallace mentioned that the economic feasibility of that plan is still unknown. “The Sewer Commission is in the process of trying to determine if the town sewer system has the capacity to support some level of housing on that property,” said Wallace.
Two phases or the entire project?
Reading from the HHIC report, Larrabee went on to ask that the town approve and fund the entire project at the 2015 Annual Town Meeting. She added, “If that option proves untenable, we urge the Selectmen to support funding for phase one this year, with the understanding that phase two will follow shortly thereafter.” Selectwoman Lucy Wallace, liaison to the HHIC, said that while she thought it was “very prudent” of the committee to split the work into two phases, given the demographics of the town and the growing senior population, “the things in the second phase are just as critical as those in the first phase.” HHIC will be submitting a capital request form for the project to the Capital Planning and Investment Committee on Sept. 26.
