As Oak Bluffs’ annual town meeting approaches, Icon Architecture’s Ned Collier and Stephen Moore are working to finalize a design for a renovated town hall with a confirmed price that voters can decide on.
On Wednesday, Collier and Moore presented updated designs and schematics of the proposed town hall project and fielded comments and questions from the public. The designs are not final.
Working closely with each town department, Icon came up with a three level town hall with improved HVAC systems and a focus on renewable energy.
The ground floor will have a large board meeting room, a conference room, and IT offices. The first floor will consist of offices for the treasurer, tax collector, clerk, town administrator. The second floor is where people can go for permitting, the building department, board of health, and the conservation commission.
“We’ve tried to take a very pragmatic approach to this project,” Collier said.
The proposed project would keep the existing frame of the current town hall and build off of it. Collier and Moore presented two design schemes: one with a flat roof and another with a gabled roof.
While there is no definite price yet, the preliminary cost estimates have the town hall set at $11 million. Icon also has not gone through a detailed estimate. “Keep in mind that every year that goes by, costs are increasing,” Collier said. Moore added that Icon ran a soft cost estimate of the previous town hall project that failed and said if built now it would be about $14 million.
The town is using a construction manager at risk (CMAR) to work with Icon to come up with a maximum project cost in advance of the annual town meeting on April 14.
The decision for a CMAR comes after a lengthy and failed process to build a new town hall. In 2017, town voters approved $9.8 million for a new town hall, but the following year, two separate bids for the project came in over budget, the last being as high as $11.1 million. A vote to approve an additional $1.3 million was shot down by voters at a special election in November. Town offices have been located at the former Oak Bluffs elementary school since 2000.
If approved at April town meeting, Icon expects construction to begin on Sept. 1 with completion by the summer of 2021.
Selectmen will hold two more public input sessions with dates to be determined at their next meeting on March 10.
“We feel very good about the plan and the technical aspects of it,” Collier said. “What we’re going to work on is the aesthetics.”
I hope the OBPB has ample time to assess the sustainable nature of all the materials to be used in this project as well as the economic viability of ongoing maintenance!
A nice direction.
adding dormers only increases the cost of any roof design. Further, it likely reduces the available space for solar panels on the roof. Interior window shades are far less money than external overhangs. – Better insulation and higher efficiency system make more sense to spend money on. Wasn’t overall cost reduction part of the design request?
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