Community input session scheduled for terminal building

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New designs for the Steamship Authority’s Wood Hole terminal building have debuted online.

On Tuesday at 5:30 pm the SSA will host a “community input session” on the designs. The session will be the first of four. This will provide an opportunity for folks to express their opinions about the design. Not that folks aren’t doing that already. 

On the Facebook group SOSA (Save Our Steamship Authority) debate has erupted about design features of the building, like windows, and what overall purpose the building should serve. While Vineyard residents have been relatively unvocal about the terminal building, Woods Hole residents have been its leading critics since the Woods Hole Terminal Reconstruction Project began. 

Issues of scale and aesthetics have been raised by those residents and earlier design concepts that called for a multi-story terminal building were scrapped as a result. This occurred despite the fact the old terminal building, now demolished, was a multistory structure. Amidst years of criticism leveled at terminal building designs, a well-known undercurrent of displeasure by Woods Hole residents over truck traffic has occasionally come to the fore. While designs for the new terminal building aren’t directly connected to truck traffic, Woods Hole residents have used the terminal building and the project as a whole as an opportunity to argue for limiting the scale of the Woods Hole terminal overall and reviving New Bedford as an SSA ferry port. Specifically, the idea of routing truck traffic through New Bedford has been a popular concept in the Woods Hole community. 

On Monday, SSA spokesman Sean Driscoll described the terminal design as a further refinement of a design concept approved by the SSA board in Oct. 2019. 

Those who attend the session will have the opportunity to pose direct questions to the people who generated the designs.

“The project’s design team, led by BIA.studios, will be on the call to discuss design criteria and objectives; foster an open dialogue with community stakeholders; answer questions related to the project design; and listen to public comments and input,” a release states. 

Due to the pandemic, the session will be held remotely via Zoom:

Go to zoom.us and use meeting ID 856 0320 8711. The same meeting ID will work telephonically by calling one of the following numbers: 669-900-6833, 346-248-7799, 929-436-2866, 253-215-8782, 301-715-8592, or 312-626-6799.