##VIDEO ID:TE7zypUley4## it is now 5:00 and it is uh today is Wednesday November 20th this is the meeting of the Westport long-term building committee uh we'll start out with the Pledge of Allegiance Pledge of to the flag United States of America and to the repblic for which stands one nation godible liy and justice for all John John good sir all right so um the uh the first item on our action item agenda uh very quickly is approval of outstanding meeting minutes I don't believe we act we we don't have minutes currently to approve do we from last we we do we do okay I think I may be may be missing that I didn't get it to you we can put them on the next agenda we'll put it on the next agenda okay sure thing um one thing we can't skip over however uh Mr hardnet has served uh as the de facto clerk for this committee for quite some time um but it uh we we are uh in need of an individual to be a clerk for this committee and and I'm asking one more time for any I'm I'm asking I'm begging for any any volunteers otherwise I will have to have to kind of draw straws and point at somebody at this point so is there anyone anyone who feels excited about potentially being a clerk I would say I wouldn't mind but I'm not as reliable as coming to the meeting as I would like to be that's fair enough G I would defer to uh other individuals who may be interested in that position I would offer but I have arthritic can and I I can't write I can't even write a checkout anymore so to get us to this meeting let me do one more meeting if you will do one more meeting Mr hard okay but at some point in time we're gonna have to when Manny gets here that'll be okay all right so that piece of uh business uh being over and done with for the day we'll move on to our discussion items uh so we're interviewing uh the responding parties for the Westport uh facilities feasibility study thank you very much uh for for attending this evening and I will uh first of all this uh the delegation from R RGB Architects and I'll uh turn it over to you so thank you very much we have how many minutes so I can uh two two minutes and that's about it folks so we we have budgeted for 55 55 so I go half and you ask some questions and stuff like that perfect we figured about 20 minutes won't take us that long we'll go through this next slide I want to do some introductions I'm uh Dave deatu I'm the owner CEO managing principal Chief bottle walk C cook dishwasher if you name it I do it um I'm here with Monica Hanley an interior designer also a business development executive John rine and Phil Derby are both on vacation this week it's that time of year one's North and one South so they couldn't be here um so we we can be here and uh we usually present with them and without them so it's no no biggie tonight the agenda we want to talk a little bit about the background the experience understanding the project scope as you wrote it in your RFP cost estimation and uh Financial feasibility study of the study itself some stakeholder engagements uh we'll look at obstacles timeline and uh some of the reporting we'll do as the due diligence is what's what's due we'll do that all in about 20 minutes so so some of the uh background uh we used your format your six questions and we put some answers in that and we put it up in there now some of these answers are here kind of to tip me off as talking points so I'll talk through that whole thing and can you tell us about your company brief overview of your experience conducting feasibility studies and building assessments um so at RGB we've been around um since 1946 next year we celebrate our uh 79th year uh I've been at RGB since 1992 U Monica's been at RGB since 2007 and uh John's been with us 14 years and Phil's been with us four years um so we are an Architecture Firm an owners project management firm and an interior design firm so we're multifaceted firm and we find that's uh particularly pleasing because you can do different things we have in-house cost estimators we have contractors that work with us and they help us all the way through especially in feasibility studies like this when you have uh cost estimates or some of your questions will lead to and I'll give you an examples of that when we go further on uh we're all professionals AIA and carb we're licensed in 13 states right now we do work all up and down the East Coast father's work down is Miami and where as North is New Hampshire and we got West is right now Tennessee but we go as far out as Texas if need be depending on our clients and type of work we do we made up of about 30 people in our organization uh we were the first in Rhode Island to do a green lead certified building and we were the second in New England to do a net zero building uh so we're heavy into lead sustainability we helped write the green code of the State of Rhode Island that they use now um so which was nice because you don't pay all the fees of all the leads and everything you do our first or the first lead project in the New England area was we did it was uh uh in Worcester it was a Shaw Supermarket toilet men's and women's toilets wasn't High Hope profile was the first one and we caught a lot of slack because uh it wasn't really the standard and trying to get uh products was almost impossible and contractors to perform now it's like the back of your hand everything's available that way so it's very easy to do now it's more customized but we kind of the transcenders on that and um you know saves a lot of money doing it it's kind of built into it Innovative technology we have all the latest uh we're on Revit we're on AutoCAD we have 3D uh technology we do virtual reality tours we do everything like that interactive presentations um some of our markets is listed over there is generalist where're big generalist we do different markets would be civil industrial R&D facilities office uh retail K through2 higher education you name what we do it and we keep multiple markets for a couple of reasons one you want to keep everyone employed we like to keep people employed and keep the same people in The Firm that's how you build it second reason is because of the uh diversity of the of the markets you can learn a little bit about markets one of your questions was what do you see is the issues with some of the materials and whatnot I can talk a little bit about that it's no in those markets next slide please these are some of the partial lists we have of some of the feasibility studies we've done it's quite a big list I'm not going to go through every one of them um but we've got a lot of house doctor on calls and especially in Massachusetts we have all the military ones I'm an ex uh I'm veteran myself I did 12 Years in military um so we do a lot of military a lot of EB work um we we do this a lot of these feasibility studies and it gives us a lot of uh kind of ground swell of of this project because it's very similar to the one we just did in Coventry Rhode Island we'll use that as a case study in a second next slide so some of the sustainable practice we do like we're doing in New Bedford right now we're doing the big courthouse in toron that they're taking the tower down rebuilding that's our project we're not allowed to put our sign up there because it's a federal courthouse but we helped them get the rebates incentives we helped uh them get $500,000 to put the flame back up you'll see the flame on top of that Courthouse shortly um so we work with local uh towns and governments to help with those rebates help with those forms for Grants and give the supporting information it's kind of custom that we do that local utility companies all our sub Consultants use those all the time we know they're out there uh whether that be National Grid in Massachusetts R energy or any of the energy companies offer them and you have to comply with those and we do some of the state stainability objectives we also meet those as well with the energy modeling tools we can almost look at something when we select some of the systems if you do a a heat pump system in the new building opposed to a boiler or a propane because gas is on its way out especially in the state of Massachusetts so you want to do heat pumps electric systems and they've come a long way the biggest thing about a heat pump system like you'd have say in your house is you don't have natural ventilation in your house you don't really need it but in buildings you do need natural ventilation so we put ervs those are the small units on the top um and they're pretty efficient as far as building goes next slide so stretch code was one of your questions about some of the stuff we've done on stretch codes uh we're currently using using a stretch code in uh we just did the major campus over in hopkington Mass for Lona labor it's a $75 million campus made up of about eight different buildings and we had to use the stretch coat on that we're in 20 different uh housing authorities in the state of Massachusetts we use stretch codes for every one of those as an example next slide so number two was said understanding the project scope so in your RFP you listed these in in R sh I'll go through them real fast introductory meetings physical evaluation s evaluation concept level and then final report now I'll go through what it takes so the intro meeting is very important because you want to gather from you all or a building committee uh what the next steps are you've done several studies of the same building that we've recognized we've done research for and we've looked at and you when you got your new High School you have this old high school I'm sure this controversial uses of what to put what not to put and a lot of times buildings go a long time and is if you leave them long enough without caring for them they get worse and worse and worse and we did this for the town of Coventry school department they let a building go too far and uh it went too far and unfortunately had a demo the entire building because once building goes too far it the weather really corrodes what's inside and it goes bad and the cost cost to remediate some of the stuff that'll go bad outweighs the cost of the building project itself most of the time so we would have introductory meetings to find out exactly what your scope is or what the agenda is if there's any political hot potatoes in the town if there's any uh General views that the town has already through the other studies that you'd think that this the direction we want to go but we didn't get that far then we'll take it upon there we do a physical evaluation something we're doing right now for company called C Corp they build tomahawk missiles in Middletown so like I said we do a lot of military stuff we're going down there take a look at their building right now that they're interested in buying very similar and they want to move all their operations into one building um we go down there and we uh you know transport us and our Engineers we dispatch everyone out there on the same day so this communication we communicate with our Engineers the day before in advance of what the acknowledgement or what they're going to be doing that day and then we go out and we look at The Building Systems look at the structure look at the Civ components capacities uh the conditions of some of the utilities are in both new and old and look at the roof like I said the structure and the interior finishes whatnot when we do our site evaluation we look at site egress and Ingress which is as important as drainage Sewer Septic and all those issues uh because if this is going to be the new town hall Annex you want like this building it to be uh easy to come in easy to park very easy to understand where the front of the building is concept level development budget and timeline so we'll come up with different concepts usually two or three different concepts we'll come up with with budgets and of course everything is with a timeline and I'll put the timeline on the introductory meeting because right after that intro meeting we we distribute and use what they call a Gant chart it's a bar chart and we put all of our meetings in advance with timelines on it so that uh people know in advance they know hey I have a meeting coming up at the end of March I better be here for that meeting and you can plan around that and so you have better participation in it it also has on that Gant chart all the expectations of when things are due when the drafts are due when the final ones will be do when the cost are do and then the final report is something that we get and deliver to you after we receive the draft we give you a draft report you look through the draft we go through it with you we could have public meetings you could include in that final report some of the comments from the public meetings and include that in the appendix to that final report next slide you can ask questions during this or at the end either way okay a cost estimation Financial feasibility so how we estimate the cost of three different ways uh we look we have internal cost estimates or estimators I should say we have external cost estimators and then we have record cost and record cost is every time we have a project we do about 100 to 125 projects a year when you have these projects coming into bid it gives you a good idea the type of building for the renovation with they go a square footage cost estimators the third party also do the same thing they look at trending for cost estimates in and around the area the region and then we do them internally with our cost estimates to bounce that back and forth so you use those three indicators and you come up with a a pretty good average if they're not all really on top of one another like I can tell you right now to renovate buildings you're looking at probably 150 to 350 depending on the type what you want to use new building structure like the one where in like a masonry structure you look at almost $700 a square foot so more and more towns and cities are saying hey let's not destroy the old building let's refinish it and repurpose the building which is a wise decision to make because the structure is the most important and you know where the bodies are right you're not going to go dig a hole outside where you want to put a building and find out used to be an Old Pond about 50 years ago so the amount of land around here is very very uh precious there not a lot of it and usually these older buildings were built on good land so we would look at that as well uh the key cost driv is right now is you know costs are actually coming down which I haven't said that in about five years uh they were skyrocketing at 1 Point 12 to 14% they're averaging off about 4 to 6% on average per year um and the cost we're seeing not labor but the materials is actually coming down so we don't know how long that'll come down or if it'll stabilize I like to use a number of 6% % per year on average is a good inflation Factor so whatever estimate we put together we put an inflation Factor on that estimate so that if you want to do things three years from now you do the 6% every year per DM and that'll give you pretty good uh result of it weather weather's been pretty uh Cooperative with us we really haven't stopped Construction in Winter since 2013 so over 10 years uh since we've stopped it but they have other Provisions for winter conditions now that that basically we work right through the winter it's not like the uh the old-timers used to tell me all the time but those are the three factors really that drive cost it's labor Supply materials and then conditions themselves um how do you identify and evaluate risks associated with the building project structure failure cost overruns and delays so this is a great thing because we look at uh and I'll use a case study and we'll talk a little bit about Coventry in a second because it's in construction right now in Coventry they said they had an old high school that they used half for School administration and they wanted to use it for an Annex and they current Town Hall was across the street very similar right and uh it had an old school building we went in it and looked at it and evaluated it and we're now renovating it and we did that a certain way where we were able through grants through the state grants federal grants and local grants be able to pay 90% of that that money um Kevin McGee who's the DPW director is our contact and he'll be our reference if you want to speak to him directly we've been pretty successful we took on that OPM role as well as the architect role so what that afforded us to do is to actually shop and go out with subcontractors so that we not only got accurate prices we actually got schedules so we're in the construction phase right now and we're guiding these guys along we're expected to be done in about 6 months it's about $3.7 Million worth of construction and we expect it to be within 7% of that number um some of the stuff that are unen that we've noticed uh thus far is pretty much nothing except the tectum deck that's on the roof right now we would examine your your roof so tectum is a subsurface instead of a metal deck it's it's a softer material they used in the 50s and 60s to span across the the roof and it was a great cheap product that they put insulation on until it gets wet and once it gets wet it turns to like Shredded Wheat and there's no structural capacity at that point so once you find that you want to remove it and you want to put metal deck in its place so that's about it that is really the the the scope creep if you will on that project uh We've renovated spaces for the building official the town manager uh there's an auditorium for um training for the police and fire for EMT and whatnot uh there's also some things for um uh training for handicap individuals that teach them how to cook uh teach them how to use computers and they even put a cafe in there the cafe is there to bring people from the outside so you in that notion they wanted to bring people in and have them go around that area and bring some life to that big building so those are some of the risks we found in there it's pretty little risk and the way we do that is we go all the way through the estimates we start off of those estimates and then we shoot them out to subcontractors so we get a better idea uh where the the budget's going next slide stakeholder engagement this is pretty important if not the most important slide I think because we can all do our job out there but if um if we do it in a vacuum then we're not doing a good job we want to get byy it after all I've done a number over 30 bonds for cities and towns and if you get the buyin from the people in the building committee those are the people of the Town they're the ones that are going to go back to the taxpayers and say this is a good thing for the town not The Hired Gun I'll I'll certainly help I'll support it with boards and presentations But ultimately it has to come from the town's people Town Administrator has to say it and he has to believe it for that to do that he has to be involved in those meetings see it understand it and agree with it and we would do all that and you wanted some examples of how this work with other communities so we did North Smithfield uh Middle School we got that approved Coventry Newport uh Luna was one of them it's going off my uh Nara Town Hall um in Providence city hall and then you're working with Providence Community Center right now with public Stakes so provid Community Center again is working with grants that we helped them get the grants and now Monica and her gang are all working uh diligently on a community center type of environment and it's strange how the the grant is written you have to have so many Community meetings in order to advance that and we're doing the same thing to say with Bristol Library they're doing the same Grant and they have these Community stakeholder meetings where the community can come in and actually change the proor or change the profile of the project we do that early on cuz you don't want to go all the way down the road and have it changed on you and then how do you manage competing priorities that conflicts among stakeholders well that's why I threw out that question tonight about the weather because pretty much everyone agrees on the weather and can communicate if I start talking about the the national elections that'd be a little bit more difficult to get everyone on the same page well building projects are very much the same way everyone's very opinionated on which way they want to go and what they want to do and how they want to spend the money and if you're not in the construction industry you can't believe $700 a square foot for a new building I mean we're even stunned sometime we get this price it's like what happened to 400 500 skip right over that so it's understanding some of the conflicts that you have amongst the people around you and trying to mitigate that and come to a happy medium knowing that not everyone's going to be happy but everyone's going to be satisfied and that's what you want at the end of the game and if we have that direction RGB can deliver once we have that direction we'll make it happen we'll take that ball across the line communication good communication and just troubles thank you obstacles what types of challenges do you anticipate for this study and plan on overcoming them um similar to ones I just talked about uh if there's past studies that people out there prefer better than the new studies or study a versus study C you want to vet those things out early on that is the biggest challenge that in timing if we wait too long and the price does keep going up because inflation does happen even though cost of materials are going down there is General inflation people get paid every year more money cost of living goes up so does the cost of construction so timeline now is the cheapest time to build it'll never be cheaper than it is today so you use out in the back of your mind and set a schedule sit to that schedule and I can guarantee that number will work at the end with low change orders our average change orders are less than 1% on average because of that routine that we go through next one timeline and Reporting so what's the typical timeline for completing a feasibility study from initial assessment to final report so we just started one today for DM Department of Environmental Management and that report is going to take us about eight weeks to complete this report should take us 8 to 12 weeks about three months to complete why that one's different is they already have a Direction so they're already advanced they already know what they're doing what they want to do so it's you're going to take you two to three 3 weeks with the holidays it may push that out a little bit more depending on people's participation involvement people travel whatnot so we'll try to get a consensus early on in January where those things are going to go once I get that consensus then I'd bring all the sub uh consultants in all the engineers in we'd huddle we'd find out what we're going to do and we'd all meet on the site everyone on the committee if this is the committee we'd all meet on site so everyone's talking to the engineers understanding what's going on in the building understanding what they're looking at all the same time that's kind of that indoctrination that I I was talking about earlier for people to understand and to get a hold of the project then after that the next meeting we kind of go through our notes and find out what's going on and that's when we get that direction people do come to the table with their other information and then we would ask people to go out and the public and find out what their interpretation of the building is and we'd mend those together that's January uh February is the time where we're putting that initial report together all the due diligence all the cost factors all the different plans that we'll go over March is the time where we then finalize everything finalize with a draft form we review cost estimates we do presentations we get feedback and then towards the end of March we finalize a report we'll do another presentation if You' like us to at the same time I think this is the six questions uh yeah this is will be the six six questions now we have some um I mean I don't know if you want to go through this other ones can you describe components of the visibility report oh okay sure can you describe the bonus yeah the technical feasibility would be all the engineers they put their input in once needed Financial feasibility we'd look you know if you have a finance director and he has to go for some um some grants and you get some other money that comes in from the town we can put that all in there the difference between soft and hard cost he'll use that terminology hard cost to Brick and Mortar soft cost is our fees Architects Engineers planners surveyors uh legal feasibility if you're looking to do that say you're in a school I understand and it's a school or educ type use you're looking to put a town use in there there could be provisions of uh either traffic which is pretty minor uh or all the provisions of zoning we' go through that operational as well I have a question about the technical feasibility it says comparative analysis of building sites since we know the two sites we know obviously the two s what would that entail what would go ahead yeah like for when we looked at a middle school for North Smith we looked at 32 sites we ended up on the same site we stopped on so uh you know rock water rock water so Westport has a certain Basin that you deal with in Westport a certain type of of site so we would look at the big picture is there a building on the site so maybe utility is already connected so that may be a good building this site over here is beautiful it's cheap in fact we own it that's great but now you don't have to dig in it I don't know what it is is there any kind of rock outcroppings if that becomes a finalist say and you want to do test pits you use the the town's DPW back hole we'd go out there with an engineer so it minimizes your cost we dig holes do test bits to try to find out what the soil's made up what the compost the soil is if there's a lot of water if there's ledge Wetlands that's the kind of stuff and utilities around there I'm I was a little more concerned uh there's an intangible on Westport of uh I don't like change uh of traffic flows uh accessibility possible mob to use type stuff yep that would be the third thing is that you did traffic studies any kind of traffic studies to back that up you know if you put it in a residential area they got to be worried about you know I've looked at that old tree for 50 years now you got to take it down and put this building up what am I going to see that's renderings will show that will put more trees back in its place just in certain areas I think what you want to do is you have to gauge those naysayers in town and you want to invite them and you want to bring the solutions to the problem you have and by doing that you invite them into the building maybe the building is part of a community center that you use and that's what kind of Coventry did with their Cafe they can bring the neighborhood into it so it's not a bad thing if people can participate in that building the other things you want to look for in a site is the shortterm and long-term cost drainage um you want to look at depth of the site long-term use of the site and you want to also look at Future potential the site you always want to look at Future um you know being an architect doing this 35 years now uh I've gone into a lot of buildings where they never thought I was going to put a second floor or put an addition and makes it terribly difficult and extremely costly to do where a lot of our buildings if not all of our buildings now look at second floor options extended options so part of that site analysis would be do you have expansion possibilities no one thinks that Westport will expand but it will since you guys were pilgrims it's expanded so it'll continue to expand it'll get bigger um it may be different in the future but how does that building change how does technology change with that building how do you see government working the next 50 years because I would imagine you'd go to this next building for the next 50 years at least so how are things changing are you going to continue to have public meetings what's the format of that all those discussions will happen how about in really in the reverse sense of the negative sense that if if the town chose not to pursue using that building the things that would be lost as a result of it I mean can you also include a scope for example there are playing fields in at that site if the town chooses to not pursue using that site and it's sold I mean can you provide alternative um alternative opportunities for some of the things that are going to be lost as a result of not pursuing it so it's not what you gain but what you also lose if you don't pursue it so some of our slides will do uh pros and cons right okay and then we present those so that the people that show up the day you're doing your draft that weren't involved either through business or life challenges they would be able to when we give that presentation we'll walk down the strategy to bring us all hopefully to the same solution and to the people that come in from the outside will be able to look at that solution and say I understand why they got what where they got you know so all those things are open and a person like yourself would know more of those challenges than a person like myself I'd have to get in there and I'd look at the obvious but you would know historically that was a ball field that was back a hundred years people use that every year for a certain beginning of the parade that's a very important field in town that's great information and that may be something that a lot of people who grew up in this town that still live in this town value and love and don't want to change so that'll be we'll try to make that a pro to that analysis maybe use that same ball field as part of the new program of that building so it's all the pros and cons and understand that what I'm trying to gather everyone is that we don't go home do our report and come back and say Here's your draft we participate with you that's the only way we'll get a successful draft uh and a successful report out of it that you can get total Buy in because after a while I go away you guys have to stay here you know we want to make it so popular that when the gentleman asked ask for a person to take the town administr his position in taking notes everyone's going to lead to that position that's not really on the agenda but I can make that happen right that's the objective like you said you're almost ready to volunteer yeah I do it all the time I I am on a couple committees I do that so it's all good uh I did I did have one one just quick question going back to what you had uh talked about as far as uh projects you have been involved in are there any projects um where you all have been there from start to finish is it those are the ones I'm I'm really curious about sure I have a slide here that if you allow me to just advance to it um so we have uh several case studies that we've gone from feasibility studies all the way down to so first let me go back to this slide here um these are all this is a partial list of visibility studies of all different types of buildings that we've gone through the ones that are highlighted in Orange are the ones that have not gone through construction but all of those feasibility studies began with a feasibility when through design construction and construction management so I will give you just an example of what this list provides if you take those orange ones out of it those are the ones that did not go yet but we're currently working with meramac Valley doing a visibility study and master planning because they're doing the same thing they're repurposing these buildings and we are helping them with s planning and relocation so that has not gone through construction but we're currently working with them Sala Regina the same thing um this is um the university has gone through um eight years legal battles legal battles so um so you can imagine all these things just take time so we start with visibility studies and then you know we just kind of get put on hold um the same thing with the archives and we can see this building from our from our office and it's kind of sad because they have beautiful beautiful um archives and history in that building and again the same thing all these archives the building is deteriorating inside and it's just they can't get together to that is politics that actually so answer your question is everything in white we finished to the end everything in Orange starts in the process uh and I would just Advance here if you want to if you have any other questions I'll just get back to my other sixth Point here this is our six your sixth question but there are some case studies just five that they was going to speak about yeah unless they ask questions I they're on a schedule so I sure I passed my 20-minute Park and I did it so continue no just for the note I I I'm on time on budget are we in questions now you can sure sure um I'm John Perry uh I'm an architect and I've done what you done nice to meet you John um I'm not sure anybody in this committee agrees with most of the things I advocate or out with that's okay disagree um and I had a discussion with Jim this morning about the project my frustration is that this thing's been going on you for years now right um I think it's highly ambitious and probably not realistic to think that we're going to come to a consensus in 12 weeks uh so I would encourage you to think about alterate strategies I I had advocated a while ago for a facilitator which we went ahead and but it didn't get advertised and we had no participation I happen to believe in that process that's essentially what you're talking about at the beginning here and I think that needs to be done uh I understand there's some other work that needs to do it but I think we start to have to bring this town along from 50 ideas down to two or three and then head in different directions just as a an as side I meet with a bunch of guys on Friday mornings over here at the coffee shop and old guys with coffee and the subject for the last months has been the high school and it's quite and people have a lot of ideas ideas that have never come to this table yet and I think that has to be brought out talked about um looked at and either looked at more in more detail I said that isn't going to work in the context of the building the high school um so I'm throwing out here not roadblocks but things I think has to be done if we're going to get any use out of you or whoever else is doing this thing uh this is a funny town like they all are and there's been articles written about this town this is the town that loves to fight and a lot of us can't get along with the other half of us um hopefully as we go on that won't be the case and certainly on this project it be nice to get a consensus but I can tell you there hasn't been one and I've been the chairman of a couple other committees here that did all this consensus work and then the selectman take it and I throw it in the basket so that's the background we have here I throw that out there and here's a couple things that I made notes um there's been a lot of reports done I read them all I don't know how many people in the committee have done them I think some of them are quite good uh especially the ones by L vest and the structure report and the code I mean you guys may replicate that but these guys knew what they were doing when they came in building's got code issues and it's got major major issues there um has a lot of opportunity too uh so I'm throwing out to say that I think it one 12 weeks isn't going to work you can you can make your proposal on that but I can guarantee you at the end of 12 weeks we are not going to have a consensus on this project uh unless everybody on this table is in violent disagreement with me but anybody who's done anything this town knows it it takes time and look around we have nobody at the meeting today and we want this room to be filled by the time we get to the point of talking about things so that's one item um existing reports you've read them all I would say good bad and different well good yeah okay um major issue here is we've had discussions with the superintendent of schools I've talked to him with everybody and I've talked to him personally I can't get a feel what his feeling and the school department is about whether we might need that building or not uh everybody says yes we might Maybe not maybe we need may need more schools but that isn't the place to do it that's a huge issue huge issue that's got to be I think addressed early on are we looking at that as a school to be moth PO for the future is that we looking at a school to be renovated for the future or let's get rid of it as an idea but I think until that gets assessed all other uses for that building so why why are we doing if we're still talking this as a school um and last lastly with regard to yourself are you looking at this as consultants for a feasibility study or is this an entree to do the A&E work I've been there both all the above okay we can do everything so I want to address a couple of your questions if I could so it's understanding uh what the different I I told Jim this morning I'm more than willing to work and help this committee but I'm only going to do it if in fact I think there's a viable process and a timeline and a commitment to do this I'm amazed this young lady still much longer than me so I'll give you a couple examples of other towns and cities have been and Westport is no different than any other city in New England so they're very similar yeah and you being in the business you know that so is there anything that the city the town of Westport agrees on say again is there anything that they agree on like I would start with that conversation first right that's an excellent there are two things there are two things everybody agrees on they're overworked and they're tired overworked and tired but I mean particularly this this building is there anything that they I mean I I would agree with you I'm overworked and tired too we agree on that I don't think so especially with regard to these buildings because people the lot of ideas out there but if you would have to say two or three I take you the coffee I love you'll get a shopping list no agreement if um if you had a certain number of dollars that you had to spend within a time frame and you had to make a decision or you'd lose the money you'd come up with a decision instead of losing the money I don't know if that's true or not that's even a tough one okay so so um it' be nice to think it is yeah couple of couple of great examples um of ownerships of buildings with towns and schools just always this Rift between the town and the school you get your taxes is the school taxes is the town taxes and then there's the selectman and those three bodies move like this and it's tough to pin them down the school and I've worked with dozens and dozens of schools all worry that the town's going to take their real estate and they won't be able to get back and the town thinks that they're overpaying for the real estate that the school has and then you have the Selectmen that just have a number of dollars that they can commit to or you lose it so the first thing you do is you find out is there something that the school can benefit from this property is it something that the town and what would the selectman agree on and if you get that into agreement that's the first step now you have the basis to make your other steps go forward and you're right it may take longer I'm assuming 12 weeks because I'm going to set a schedule and I'm going to charge forward with it and make sure it happens um but there will be some roadblocks um I always look at the road biggest roadblock I always see is dollars uh either the funding that runs out funding that's only available for this type of building and not that type of building that automatically throws something out and I got to go to the selectman to get the money when we were doing torton Courthouse the flame had been taken down 20 years ago and was it was in a in a DPW garage and we dusted it off and we said where does this go and it goes up there we had old pictures of it well no one had money for it everyone thought it was a good idea and those the people that made those decisions didn't have the money so we actually approached uh one of the Selectmen and he went up to the governor and she thought it was a great idea and we got $500,000 it just started from an idea so if you can generate an idea amongst the people that maybe they're not 100% in agreement but maybe they go for because they have something in it you another famous example was they call a bundle Bond sometimes you go for a school bond and you have the anti-school people the people that don't have kids in schools anymore that they don't want their taxes go growing up and then you have the people that have young children that want good schools for their kids and they look to the older people and they say well you had good schools for your kids in the day why can't I have mine and you say I'm just trying to live here a town I grew up in then I don't want to leave how do you put those two together you create a bundle Bond so now I create a senior center with a school and a town appendage so everyone uses that position maybe I have a police station Annex in there and you bring that together so that's kind of bringing those three kind of people and you bring them together into one bond that Su satisfies everyone now I don't know what I'm dealing with yet because I haven't met the gentleman on on a Friday morning process your father it could be it could be a couple of uh meetings and what you do to bring people in the audience you bring food I put this big commercial center together a big mall and it was very controversial and I grew up in that town and I remember one lady saying to me you're not even invited in this town anymore if this thing goes ahead it was an embarrassment to my town I created this great mall we put it together and then she came after me after when the Staples was open and she was buying things those the greatest thing ever but how we got there is that we fed them you bring people to a place you have a pizza or you bring some coffee and some donuts and you make it a round table discussion where people don't sit at the edge of the table and we said we have a problem we have a building in town that if we don't do anything with us it'll cost us money and if we do something with it it's going to cost us money so everyone's here tonight to decide what we want to do with it and let's throw some ideas and when you throw them on the board you try to finalize what ideas Blend or SE together and you come up with something it may take one or two or even three meetings but you try to build that consensus and that's what's going to generate this the other thing is you have to have a deadline because deadlines make things happen I love the thought of the coffee on a Friday morning I always tell my wife when I retire that's what I'm going to do that's what I want to do I want to meet with the guys and talk and all that stuff and be a lot of fun but that goes forever there's no time frame so if you could put a time frame on the end of this thing and says look if we're going to run out of funding as of May first we've got to make a decision and this is the schedule we have to work towards or we're going to lose this opportunity out of town an opportunity we've had several times before then you generate that momentum and we give it our best best shot I don't want you to do another study you spent a lot of money on studies you know look at dery high school dery high school we're working in the the dery gym right now because they built a new high school and their plan was to knock down the high school and put Fields up which they did and they kept the auditorium now we're working inside the auditorium making those classrooms because the schools they built weren't big enough so the school department says aha see that's why we should have saved the money because you never knew of there extra schools but the town's also in there as well the town we working with the EMS department they were in there at one point now they want to do school administration in there they want to do Town Administration in there they want to use as a multi-function cultural center for the entire town you see how they're bringing the whole town into it instead of just the school so trying to separate that or peel that banana if you will and that's our objective and that that is truly the nature of the Beast that we have here we need someone to pull all of these needs together it's a very large building it's 160,000 Square fet no one Department can use the entire building and so we need the creativity to show um to show people how it can be carved up and used for multiple purposes because I think it can satisfy a lot of needs not just for Town Hall there are a lot of people that are very much um accustomed and really want to preserve this existing building as the town hall um the school is centrally located to town uh and a lot easier with the highway access and whatnot but this is Central Village and this has been the town hall for you know forever and so there's a lot of sentiment that wants to keep this here so how you know how do you how do you include a little bit of both or none or but there's the Council on Aging there's cultural issues there's sporting events there's the recreation department that wants to use it possibly the highway department to use the garages there so there's so many different facets and we haven't been able to pull all of that together to do a creative Outlook as to how that could look and how it could be unti maybe there's housing thrown in there I don't know maybe there's some school facilities that could be used there there's a little bit of sensitivity with including School in it because it's also a public building and so youd have students mixed with public so if you have young students there that's perhaps a problem but all of those things need to be vetted out and each one of the each one of the members of this committee can't do that individually so that's why we need a firm like yours to pull us all together and show the town this is how it can be there's a price tag but there's a price type to do nothing and I think that's the thing that people have to really understand no matter what we do it's going to cost money it's going to cost money to knock it down it's going to cost money to mothball it it's going to cost money to develop it so it's worth nothing to sell it because someone has to do the same things that we have to do do and that cost money to them so I think from a uh if we were to sell the land we the town would not recover very much and we would lose a very valuable asset as a result of that because we can't get that much land with public water supply and playing fields again where are we going to find that right so selling is an option but I don't think personally any way my my opinion not the not the highest and best use of that land but no matter what we do it's going to cost money and so we need to have a good road map as to what are the different ways that we're going to and and one that we can sell an option that could be sell sold whatever the choice may be so you know the town of North Smithfield if I could town of North Smithfield this building reminds me a lot of Kendall Dean there was a school called kendle Dean and the Kendall cooperation the early 20th century gave the building to them um they would only be able to use it for for school use it's now the town hall because the town hall they were in was small it was Antiquated as they went over to K de that was a big controversial it was always given to the school you should always well they built a new school so they went through different Renditions Senior Center they went through school administration tone Annex there were ball fields in back of the school very very similar that took eight years to develop so it took a long time to develop with different eyes ideas finally it came down to just a on they had money and the money was going to run out and they had to do something well Speed Ahead eight years they ended up we ended up renovating that building for uh School administration on one level second level is town hall and third level is town hall and we put an addition in back for the Town Hall open area where they have Town Hall meetings um there's still a ball field and back they still use it for multi-use type buildings and they seem to be happy not everyone was happy in town because they wanted a new building they wanted off of schools they didn't want to ruin the old building but these old buildings have a lot of good things to them right right so you don't want to just get rid of them and lastly the comment you made about uh keeping that asset and never selling that asset is a good thing because the town won't get money but the town produces money so it doesn't need to sell it it's not like it's an entity and you want to keep that U land because it does have those utilities built into it that aren't that easy to get anymore right one of the yeah one of the things that they has mentioned that we are also forensic Architects we look at these buildings in the same you know find the problems find the issues in corrective um approaches um I know we didn't have a chance to show you this but this is a slide where we have been working with all these public buildings in um Massachusetts Fall River Public Library all of these forensic assessments looking at these beautiful structures beautiful old buildings and you know they're assets yes right they're real assets so now one will say you know obviously they're on the historic registry there would not be something that you want to get rid of but there are other buildings brand new you have to involve the community this one right now I just uh on last wednes uh Thursday night we had Community involvement and what we did is we got together with the community because again this was a building that received the Grant and it was um created as a rece years AG which is a New Concept right now when you want money it's available there but it has a deadline we had to involve the community we have to we the the the town bought food and let me tell you so I have pictures we're going to be posting them on the website and you're welcome to go look at them the response that we got from the public because it used to be an old abandoned School uh there was a lot of crime in the area a lot of these things but we got the community involved now it's a community center what happens in there now it's education it's Health Care all these grants need to meet a certain amount of requirements for them to keep that money but it's no longer used as a school but it does have that educational component and so there are examples of how you can involve the community and make something that may not be possible and visible but grab that money that's available out there to start the process of Chris K faili so one question quick quick one who's going to be the project manager who's the one if we hire would be at our meetings who are we going to deal with on a regular be two of us it'll be myself and John johnine will be there we're the guys where the will from the outside of peria will be able to guide everything then we get into the actual project examples of interior finishes renderings that's when you'll see Phil and Monica and a whole host of other uh staff can ask a question how many projects you guys have going now uh currently in design and construction we've got a about 85 and you're the president yes you're not going to have much time for this one compared to those other 83 right uh absolutely I I work seven days a week people laugh the way I work but I love it so I'm up at 4:30 I mean I'm not saying that you should be fulltime on this but uh I've been in the business too and I know that there's a lot of Demands on your time so uh we work the structure of our company is that um I have five principles each one of those principles are ahead of a division uh whether it be housing educational retail commercial a historic preservation and they run their practices and I run them and a job like this where you're going to have a lot of public presentations uh a lot of history because I've been there so long on what is done I always have my involvement I have my involvement in every project uh I touch every one of them um I will not be here alone I will be here with John and John's a registered architect as well as the project manager he's also a principal as well so that's how we run that's how we run multiple projects like that you in essence have five uh different firms in the same company like that if I could actually you have one go um so a important consideration for small community like Westport and it's not unique to Westport but communities like ours uh certainly are funding so could you expand a bit more more on uh I know you mentioned a couple projects where grants were taken in um external funding opportunities the town has rejected I believe over a dozen override uh valot questions since the late 90s so funding is a big you know consideration here in Westport so if you can talk about some of the funding opportunities that you've seen in other projects well the general bonds um there was just it's ending to the end of December as you have the covid money the APPA APPA I think it's called funds they're ending uh but there's General all the bonds that you're working with Providence on those are certain bonds and grants that go out so if there's certain grants and Provisions we work towards them with you we do all the documents and the paperwork the supporting stuff to help you get those grants and then we follow those guidelines and grants like the city of Providence they took this existing building that had been somewhat renovated and our job now is to go in there and try to make it something based on those grants and based on the provisions of those grants um so if they're out there we'll gonor them uh if we hear of them then we will let you know about the others that are out there the CPC grants that are always going on for state of Massachusetts that we're working with Fall River and New Bedford on right now uh for do those no CPC grants are limited to how much money they can get uh but they usually match it and you try to match them both ways again if if it's a it's a big thing you know if the town keeps going against the overriders because they're concerned about how the money spent if they knew how the money was spent and they were in favor of how the money was spent they would be in favor of it because he get something out of it and that last sentence I just said is key getting something out of it so you have to find out what they want and you have to incorporate that into your solution and that's these are several examples of that I mean we have this other projects that that's how they got their Grant and it's amazing this project right now Higher Ground they had no money to do this $5 million building and it's pretty amazing they took this abandoned building on the bottom and right now they are right is that a state Grant or a Federal grant uh they have both yeah this is uh this they came from Nigeria and uh one of the one of the people and did a little rendering from up above here and then we had to make the plan work in phases so we're in Phase they just got funding for phase one and tomorrow morning at 8:30 we're going to a a little event a little celebration that they got the completion of one and yes I'll be there I'll be there at all those things I live this stuff right you're got to live it you're going to enjoy it so um if I may there there's one item I don't think we we've touched on that um I do want to make sure that you all have have a grasp of in in terms of presenting any final outcome to the voters of Westport when it comes to needing needing uh funding for this part of what I am hoping to get out of this study is the ability to present a true cost benefit analysis on what it would take to do something with the old high school building but also how does that compare with the needs the existing costs the uh the the the issues in the other buildings so I know that you know it is part it was was part of the RFP as far as a uh uh a general analysis of the other Town building so I just want to make sure that that that's on your radar as as a a a huge part of this as well so we have a slide here for that question so in other words you want us to look at all the buildings as I understand your question and you're more or less concerned that uh we didn't include that or I thought about that as as the final I just wanted to make sure I I that you were you had this part of the analysis and to follow up on that I mean I I question whether for 150,000 bucks you could do all of these buildings yeah how many buildings are there so seven within this we're talking about right seven okay oh wait a minute eight not seven forget it so so the the only other buildings that that are specifically um we're asking specifically about are the town hall where we're in right now the town hall Annex just down the road and the Council on Aging buildings yeah and and the needs and potential issues of those well well in addition to the yeah so it's we do it the same we do it the same day you look at the buildings like that you know we we have forensics but you're not going to I'm not going to go in here with a back ho and a pick and stop picking at a wall I'm not going to look at that I'm going to look at you know facially what a building has the systems and whatnot and I'll come out with the appropriate Engineers to do that stuff happens so let's assume it can't get done in 12 weeks what does that do to your fee proposal um if I presume you'd build in at the end some increments if we got to go to 13 weeks and 14 weeks and whatnot that there's a if it goes to eight years I'm going to have a big issue with that one right if it goes that long um we set a schedule and if it goes a few weeks even a month or two months later I don't go back for that it's the general because you get the momentum once you get the momentum you become part of that feeling you know I've there's so many Bond uh I'm implying scope too well obviously have the scope changes then then I got to bring certain consultants in like Consultants could ask that hasn't changed so when you practice that's still the same thing so hoping the scope stays the same when we get to that point I think scope I can see changing is the amount of time it takes to get moving down the road if we go three steps forward and five steps back four steps forward and six steps back yeah I'm going to be learning not about fee but I'm going to be learning hey we're not getting anywhere what do you want to do I'll call a huddle to that coure team again and say we got to restart this rethink this um You probably will have people in the town I'm not saying you will but most towns have people that just don't want any progress uh and that'll just put the the  the or rather in in the water to stop yeah every town has them we try to invite those people to the town you try to invite them into conversation um sometimes they want to work with you sometimes they don't you know those are the people people that you know when you win the bond referendum those are usually the people that come out of the woodw and congratulate you at the end when it's a successful project or they write bad pieces of stuff in the paper about you I mean that's that's what you have to do but is what's probably Central to my argument is going to be that when you form the group you form a bond no matter who you pick tonight or number of nights you interview you want to form a bond with that person or that group for that firm and you want to all be there to support each one of them uh their support their ideas and support them in nature uh if the the group that you have is splined you'll never get anything past and part of that is finding that group together I've battled a lot of bond referendums where we've won and we've lost and I've met a lot of people and I've got a lot of friends as a result of it because you become friends you rely on each other you talk you talk about personal stuff I I find out who you are about you your history what you like what you don't like and that's who you are and that's what you want to do as a group you want to do that same thing and once you form that body that that strong body around you then you can take on other things and you can say well this is the direction we want to go I really want to go this way but I understand all the provisions I'll go this way that's how you get it done not everyone's going to get what they want including ourselves so I I believe we're right up against it here is there anything that you would like to add in closing uh I I I just would like to say that some of the issues that you've spoke about tonight it's not going to scare us uh We've dealt with a lot of more difficult ones and they're very similar very similar you know uh and we're on to take on the challenge as we've done before uh we've got some great people in the organizations uh my my five principles are friends uh and they're they're all professionals and they're pretty tough people uh and they can do a good job and they good good design and I'll make sure that happens and I want to be in the fight with you so thank you very much for for having us okay take care look familiar no okay around a little bit but yeah perhaps uh [Music] standard for a [Applause] moment switch over here but thank you again okay splinters with toothpicks splinted with toothpicks okay everyone thank you very much you thank you everybody uh to do I think plug thum sit down here if you want Evan plant from building engineering resources uh here with hkt uh Architects PA will be joining us shortly and Bill Hammer as well from hkt principal and owner of hkt EXC so bill is running late I guess he left at 3:30 from from Boston yeah from Bost and uh it exceptionally bad night clearly so yeah so that ride seems to get worse and worse every every week yeah yeah fortunately for us we're we're in eastn so we miss most of the traffic Oh e that's a 45 minute drive yeah exactly yeah but uh yeah Charlestown that's a bear Bost we need to get out of Bost my wife goes into North Station three or bets are off that's the killer getting across yeah yeah right Bight Bob's Bob's been meeting up there for a while worked for City Hall it was F walk right exactly yeah they got a nice new pedestrian bridge going in the uh the the pedestrian bridge over to station now yeah yeah I hear footsteps welcome we just did the thumb drive so they can drive oh perfect [Music] okay all right yeah absolutely go right ahead you all set we're still rolling that's okay my name is Paula clarage I'm with hkt Architects and I'm going to be the project manager on this project Bill Hammer is the principal in charge for this he was stuck in some pretty horrendous traffic is my understanding so I don't think he's going to be able to join us today and Evan plant is with be he's going to be our mechanical electrical plumbing and Fire Protection consultant on this project and start going through the project uh the presentation uh this is the team that we've built we have par who all of these people that are on our team the companies that are on our team we've all worked with for many years so have very good working relationships with them par is going to be doing the civil and Structural Engineering be will be doing all the me and uh building envelope Technologies will be our building envelope consultants for that assessing the existing buildings TCI is our cost estimator we've worked with them for years and Jerry Truro uh has been great he's very good at coming in I don't think he's ever missed on price so we have a lot of faith in him and the cost estimates that he's provided to us over the years uh akf is our code Consultants we've also worked with them for many years very knowledgeable and have been uh keeping up with all the latest coach changes energy code changes things like that can advise on that and UE are environmental consultants and the firm hkt we've been in business for over 50 years bill has been uh was one of the founding partners with it so he's going to be seeing this project from start to finish and one of the things that we pride ourselves on is our community input and engagement and there are um several techniques that we've used over the years for um trying to get input from the community having charettes surveys website kind of information that sort of thing so that's one of the things that I think will be really important for this project and then um because we've worked with all of these consultants for so many years our relationship with them the way they do business their work ethic and how we all work together I think is a very good team for this project as well some of our background and experience the f photo at the upper right is the Seth Ventress building this was a building that was built in 1895 as kind of a one of the original multi-purpose sort of buildings it was a town hall it also had a police station there's even a jail down in the basement or was and was also used as a school and hkt converted it into a community center and the auditorium that was already in there was renovated and brought back to life it had been used kind of as a giant store room and neglected and then School offices were um made down into the basement and the whole exterior of the building was restored back to its former Grandeur uh and the second project there is the facilities Improvement plan that we did for the town of Fair Haven we did an assessment of 13 Town owned buildings there and tried to come up with a comprehensive Improvement plan for all of them and how they could be either renovated or reused and just what they could do with that the bottom photo is for the Wellsley that's their Town Hall we did a townwide capital projects plan for them did a comprehensive plan for and the design of uh two elementary schools also for the Warner recreation center and repairs to their fire station the upper two photos are of uh the Princeton public facilities master plan we did an audit of six town owned buildings there to prioritize the um needs for repairs and what needed to be done for each one the project in the middle is the Salsbury Emergency Services we did a feasibility study of the fire station police station and DPW facilities so they could plan for future operations and the photo on the left is um the police station which was actually constructed the rest was left in planning stage and the photos on the bottom are the Cambridge City Hall Annex um it was an assessment of the existing building it was built in 1871 it had been through a lot of uses over the years I think it was originally a school and it had been renovated multiple times also suffered a fire damage and the roof what we did in our um renovation of it was to put back those pediments that you see that were originally taken off I think after the fire had happened so a lot of research went into it to restore it back to what it originally looked like and and in the end and ended up becoming one of the first Municipal lead gold buildings in the State uh one of the things that we I think would be kind of a challenge on this project but we're looking forward to is the process and understanding the project scope um typically what we do is we do a programming document so we send out questionnaires for the town to fill out and it's to understand how the different municipal offices because we're kind of talking about moving municipal offices possibly into either the old high school or renovating the town offices themselves to the first thing we have to understand is just how you use your spaces what kind of space needs and square footage and areas are needed for all of those I think there was some discussion about the needs may be changing from the size and the number of staff that you currently have so we' want to plan into the future to make sure that whatever we do down the line will meet your needs as far as your concepts for growth things like that um then we develop High Lev concepts for use based on the um Community input that we get to because I think it seems like one of the challenges with the trying to figure out what to do with the buildings here is the um possibly Community push back or opinions that you know we want to try to address that and then we'd look into options for reuse whether we would renovate all of the buildings whether we'd renate at some of the buildings and uh maybe demolish some of them or do a total Redevelopment but we develop a plan for how we would do that if even if we means phase renovation for some of the buildings too that you could do over a number of years and then we'd present options for feedback we'd want to get more Community input and just make sure that everybody is kind of engaged with the ideas that are putting out there and we can try to satisfy as many op people members of the community as possible and then finally we' finalize a preferred option for presentation and to the community and in our evaluation of existing buildings this is just an example of a evaluation I did recently for the Cohasset Public Safety buildings uh we do a thorough review of the previous reports we've already kind of read through those but we'd want to look at them a little more in deep in depth with you to try to understand um what has already been discussed what your feelings and thoughts are and what the proposals were there the studies that they had done what worked what didn't work and try to incorporate that into what we do for our um assessment and planning uh the existing conditions assessments is very similar I believe to what they probably done we' do visual deficiencies and repair history we'd check the envelope components and the interior finishes what sort of condition they're in the building systems whether they're adequate for reuse or if they have be completely replaced um and Code Compliance and mandated updates for accessibility and energy uh with the new energy code there are a lot of um upgrades that need to happen that a year ago weren't necessary um also we look at structural issues and then civil issues as well and how the sites are organized and see if that can be improved upon as well and basically once we're all done the assessments will kind of identify benefits and adequacy for the use of the building for the short the long term depending on how we um choose to move forward so the me FP mechanical electrical plumbing and Fire Protection building assessment that would be performed by us building engineering resources in partnership with hkt um a lot of our projects start with a building assessment right of the existing mechanical systems the electrical systems um in regards to the high school right and the study that was already performed we know much of it is is obsolete right and really isn't suitable for reuse but pieces of it may be right and so that's where we factor that into the asset end of life with the overall project goals if there's a phased approach and potentially maybe we can get 10 years out of the existing boiler room right and factor that into the renovations we can evaluate that that would of course be factored into uh the overall uh financial analysis of the project right and whether we're looking at the individual Town buildings here the town hall and the town Annex um with now having multiple buildings we have multiple services so there's independent boiler plants there's Independent Electrical Services that need upgrade right so that's something we would factor in up front and of course uh deeply assess within the uh the cost estimates um so our firm we are a Massachusetts based firm we have a lot of stretch code experience uh many of these are good practices right for high performing building uh they're now mandated within our state right and Westport being a stretch code Community um we have a deep familiarity with those one of them here's a few highlights uh within the stretch code one is solar Readiness right so you're not required to install solar PV within a uh stretch code Community you are in specialized optin um but solar Readiness it's conduit Pathways it's evaluating the roof for structural capacity to support those PV pH photovoltaic photovoltaic arrays in the future um and be prepared and the energy recovery on the ventilation systems this is a very common technology uh within all H systems now offers substantial operational savings right um and then the EV ready uh component of this for a group B building you're actually required to have 20% of your parking spots EV ready meaning conduit installed wire pulled and bases ready for an EV charging station to be installed so there's substantial cost with that um there are some caveats to it and other options but uh it is a substantial cost burden right and one that needs to be very well understood for the different sites uh our decision making process we always like to offer energy modeling as a part of the study process um especially when we get into maybe a tussle with a system selection um with overall project goals upfront project costs initial costs um what is the payback on a higher performing system is there any payback we see this a lot with geothermal uh heat pump systems versus air source heat pump systems depending on the building type it may not always make sense um but with the uh really very common uh Federal grant programs that are very easily available now and readily available to a lot of municipalities it it might actually make geothermal more cost effective than an air source heat pump system um that can also be integrated with a common boiler system a hot water system uh we have a lot of heat pump technology at our uh fingertips now um which really makes it very flexible and it's part of the process is just understanding what the town's goals are right um of course initial cost constraint is you know first and foremost but beyond that what is the long-term plan for these buildings is it a 50 75 year building or is it a a near-term 20 to 30e plan um Paul okay so one of the things that we always try to work with with clients is trying to manage the cost and it's always an important concept anyway um but this diagram here we like to refer to because it kind of helps really clearly illustrate that that green swoop is where you can really have influence on the cost if you make a lot of decisions up front and incorporate that into the project incorporate everything in as early as possible which is why we really like to spend a lot of time on the programming phase to try to really understand what you need get a lot of feedback from you and try to get decisions made early so we can incorporate that into the drawing so it can all be priced out the red line that swoops up is changes that are made as you get further and further down the design process and then of course once you get into construction as you make more Chang es it's going to result in change orders and increase the cost of the project so the more we can do to try to help you give us information upfront that'll help control the cost as much as possible and we also have like I already talked about our cost estimator Jerry who would provide cost estimates to us if the projects go into construction at various stages throughout the project make sure that we can stay close to the goals that we've set for the project for the feasibility study um we could provide cost estimates for the various options that we're proposing so you can have an idea of how to make decisions based on the needs versus the cost for that as well so some of the stakeholder engagement and Community process that I spoke about a little earlier uh it's we love to have the community input on this so that you have a lot of support for the project and you know don't have to be fighting it all the way through so I feel like they're heard I identify key groups and individuals and kind of develop public goals and concerns so we can try to address those and the ideas that we put forth and let them know that we are taking their considerations into um account uh the other thing that we've done in the past before is also have all department meetings with the Departments of the town and get them all in one room have everybody present their ideas their thoughts their concerns who needs to work with what who thinks they should be in what building just so it very helpful we found for everybody to hear what other people say because a lot of times you have your meetings within departments but you don't necessarily talk to each other so it's helpful to hear those um conversations happen and some of the obstacles that we can foresee uh with this is getting to the yes so we know that there have been a lot of yes we know there have been a lot of studies we know there's been a lot of effort put into this and we don't know what they are yet but there is something that has stopped this project from moving forward so we want to understand how do we get to the yes so try to understand any opposition to the previous studies and Concepts that were put forward in that and then try to understand what is expected of this feasibility study to make sure that we're addressing the proper concerns for you and for the community and trying to tap into the passion of the community and what they want to see happen with these buildings um also use the engagement process to reinforce the discussion with the community to find the middle ground so we can make sure to get their support and accommodate multiple points of views we also understand that money could be an obstacle because as Evan has already pointed out there are some costs that if we move forward might be pretty challenging not to include like energy cost and updates that we need to do to address code related issues that sort of thing structural improvements that sort of thing so it could be an obstacle so just something to keep in mind as we're putting all of these ideas forward to see how we can best address that and if it is an obstacle what we can do to try to you know bring it back into budget and one thing in our toolkit that we like to use for that is a life cycle cost analysis so that factors in your energy costs your annual energy costs along with the initial energy whatever your options are your initial system costs your annual energy costs your annual maintenance cost and then the expected life expectancy of the system um so if your system's only going to lasts your selected system may be the cheapest but it's only got a 20-year life expectancy you need to factor in that system replacement every 20 years right so maybe it's a 25y year outlay right air source heat technology while it's very readily available it is more of a commodity piece of equipment so it's really got a shorter term life expectancy than something like a robust Chiller boiler plant um and that's something we'd really want to look at holistically with every option right um because that a lot of times that value can be lost right if it's shortsighted first cost only discussion so this was an initial pass through for um the schedule for the feasibility studies and the first section is more of an information gathering uh so everything that's kind of in that light blue section there we'd have a kickoff meeting to establish goals schedule Milestones do an in public Outreach just to get opinions that we can start using to formulate the uh initial concept developments it's also when we do our programming and our site analysis as well we foresee that to be about a six- week period um the next phase would be the concept development and that would be based on all the information that's gathered um this is when we'd also have a design charet and we can choose whoever you would like to participate if you want that to be the town if we want to have the community involved we I think it would be important to have them involved as well in a type of chared of some sort and again having an all department meeting and then we've develop options for feedback and we'd like to present those options to the community for feedback and possibly a website survey or something like that just to get initial input to see if we're headed in the right direction um then the next section that would also be about nine weeks the next phase would be um the cost finalizing the plan and cost and we foresee that to be about seven weeks and then of course once we have our final option again do a public Outreach and present that and get input on the direction we're headed and then finally we' um develop a draft report and get in input from both the town and the community and then put together a final report and put that out publish it on the town website or however you wish to release that and some of the KE ke components for our final feasibility report would be the space programming for the municipal departments and any shared spaces that if you have multiple departments housed in a single building what sort of spaces that can be shared to try to get some efficiency out of the uh square footage usage evaluations for each of the different buildings that we're looking at test fits for renovated and or new buildings and articulate the relationships that are critical for operations in that um we do aity evaluation m which kind of has all of the buildings has the different functions how they all intersect together to make sure that we're putting the right teams and the right departments together in the right buildings and then um cost analysis an opinion of probable costs and then we'd also have conceptual plans in there where we can kind of take the areas that we've allotted based on the programming and see what fits and where they would go and how they would relate to each other and then we'd also have advantages or disant anage of the various Concepts that we studied so why this particular team uh I think our experience has been very diverse hkt has worked on a lot of different sorts of buildings we've done a lot of feasibility studies we worked with a lot of municipalities so we're very familiar with the process and the um task that is being asked of the team for this project we also have a great track record with all of our consultants and working together and we all work really well together and I think we have a level of comfort in knowing that we can rely on them to meet deadlines and to get proper feedback and that sort of thing and we also strive to find Opportunities among challenges and deliver some creative problem solving techniques that we hope will address what you're looking for out of this project that is it yes thank you anybody have any any questions to I think you answered my crime I think your schedule starting in January and doing through June is realistic not much sense in really can do a hell of a lot between now and the first of the year uh but we've got a proposed budget of $150,000 I think that's caped that isn't that Jim it is right now yes um that's a lot of work for $150,000 between you and your consultant is that realistic I believe it can be I mean I know bill has looked at this and he would be able to speak to this much better than I can but um I don't think we'd be going after the project if we didn't think we could do it and I think that it does seem realistic for us to be able to do that in the timeline for that amount of money with the number of uh partners and vendors you're using what is that with a number of um partners that you be doing the project with yes yeah okay how has your in your experience how have you seen uh Community uh interaction I mean do you find that um communities are very engaged or you find that you have to pull people really into to get input I'm talking about taxpayers residents not so much the department but that would use the building but Community input I mean do you how much Community input do you do you really see that it depends on how engaged the community is and it depends on how you um put the information out there that you want feedback for we've done a couple of different things one is to have meetings where people actually show up and some communities we get huge out turn turnouts some you know just a few people show up and that's helpful just because I think the interaction and the conversation is helpful but I we've also done where um people do show up and then you can write ideas on poits we found that if people don't have to actually get up and say something publicly they might be a little bit more honest but if they can put it on a Post-It and give you their opinion you can get information that way there's also website surveys where we can put it on the town website or you can send out an email to get surveys and that way you contact people that may not necessarily show up to a town meeting so there are a v variety of ways I think that we can try to get as much into it as we can okay how willing would you be to help I I point out there's more people up here at the table than there are in the audience here today that tends to happen you might have noticed that yes and that's a problem because you get to the end of this thing and nobody has been involved nobody knows what's going on so we're going to try this one more time uh hopefully we're going to do it differently and you know you had a picture of a meeting someplace where the room was packed with people God we'd love that that would be great I've never seen except um at a town meeting or a controversial actually High School had some big meetings the new high school but very rarely and in this process has never happened so part of a consultant's job here is going to be doing a little something a little different is to get the process going before we can even start talking about Alternatives and costs and all this you heat pumps and everything else right that's over there until we get this process going that's right unun for better for worse the consultant that we hire has got to take a lead in helping us get that get get it going because otherwise we can sit here ourselves and come up with every idea in the world and I can guarantee I don't even know if it'll get past the select much less the town meeting yeah no it can be a challenge and I know even in my town same thing and a lot of the meetings that we've gone to it's turn out just a few people it's just another select board meeting or this or that so it's hard to get people um engaged but I think part of that is also getting the word out there as early and as often as possible so send out newsletters send out emails put it on the town website and just you know we can talk through the things that you have found that maybe have worked or haven't worked and things that we've done in the past that have worked or haven't worked so I think we could try to find ways to try to generate some interest before we actually have the the event or the shed or whatever we're looking for for Community input yeah through social media and whatnot right yes exactly you know the oldfashioned newspaper is gone and so you know we don't have one single Community newspaper and it's very fractured throughout the town as to what paper so it's hard to get a singular message out to the whole Community because there isn't that one paper you know so some people will use social media others you know are trying to get information maybe from a newspaper so it's hard to find that one good element to capture people's attention and get the information out there so that's where I bring it up I mean John hit the point you know that it's it's important to get that engagement for boy it's hard to it's hard to get yeah yeah so in this context how would you use this sh uh I think just trying to get what we could do is one of the options that we had up there is having putting out information about what do you want to see in the old high school do you want to save the old high school because that's another question do people really want to save that or would they rather have the land and build something totally new will the cost for renovating it be too much so we can put down various options and people can sort of like pick you know I agree with that I don't agree with that I there was one we had where you just put a little round sticker on I like that one the best I like this one not so much and so there are ways that we can try to get opinions for how they want to see the buildings reused what they think would be appropriate in those buildings what they want to see with the town hall if they think it's a great idea for moving Town Hall departments into another building or renovating this building because there's going to be a whole bunch of different opinions on what people think should be done with the buildings that we're talking about as part of this study and it would be good to get sort of input to see where people's minds are already because I'm I'm sure everybody's got sort of preconceived notions of well you've already got a town hall why do you need to move or you've got this building you know why do you need to keep that or let's tear it down it's old and terrible so I think just trying to establish what those opinions are would be helpful and just kicking it off and understanding where the community thoughts are right now but with that though I think some people are afraid to make that decision not knowing what the cost is you know it's easy to say we just tear it down sell it well I don't think people realize that it could cost four or5 million to just tear that building down and remove all of the the rubble from it it's easy to say tear it down don't need it but if you know if there's a cost associated with it so that's why it's a little bit of a chicken and an egg that I think that it's hard for people to make a decision that they would stick with without knowing approximately how much it's going to cost for that decision it's like oh I like this oh but it's that much I know I like this one better yeah and we could do that kind of thing too where because we have multiple opportunities for Community engagement you may come in at the beginning and say tear it down let's get rid of it and then when we do the studies to show this is the benefits this is the you know negatives for that and then you go yeah let's not do that so I think there are opportunities several times down the where people can change their minds once they have more information to good okay does anyone else have any questions at this time why should we hire you went right away that's why we started in January because that gives us time to get contracts all in place so we can hit the ground running tell us why we should hire you versus all these other people we're talking to oh well I think again it's because I we've got a lot of experience in trying to get communities input and I think we have a lot of experience in not only doing feasibility studies for municipalities on town own buildings and things but we have a lot of creativity I think in ways that will meet needs that you may not even be aware that you have yet and we I am very proud to say that I think with hkt we are very good creative problem solvers and I think that would make us outstanding compared to our competition perhaps so back to something Cindy just said how do you manage expectations right there's a lot of ideas for this building there's a a lot of ideas for the high school um but everything comes with a cost so how do you combine the two the expectations with the cost or is the plan to kind of see what what the community wants and then work towards that goal and then come up with the course later or do you include that all together how do you how do you make it work I think that's something we'd have to discuss together and especially in that early stage when we're trying to set goals and Milestones if it turns out that we need to have have sort of an initial kind of cost input when we're coming up with our Concepts kind of early on before we get to the final report and have like all these options and like a final cost but we can start getting input early on I think from Jerry our cost estimator as well as from experience from what we've done on previous buildings and with input from be and their knowledge of how you know things have been going on other projects and the costs associated with systems and things like that so I think it's something that we can kind of address early on just to get initial concepts for you're going to be doing a lot of structural work on this so you know there's going to be more cost Associated on that with this option structure may not be such a problem we can just you know move in and make some few rearrangements and adjustments Renovations the inside so depending on the sort of Concepts we have I think we can get some conceptual cost ideas up front that we can present and just let people know that if we do this just understand it'll cost this much maybe not an exact number but you know general concepts and will you be the lead on the project I will you will and who else will be working with you throughout the project close I mean who do we deal with on a regular basis uh you would I would probably be your main contact and then bill would be involved from start to finish as well and if you can't reach me you can reach bill but I would be your primary contact now can you also provide uh assistance to the town in seeking grants for any of the projects that we may pursue you if we're going down a certain path you may be aware of certain grants that are available on either a state or a federal level uh personally no we'll have some that we might be aware of that we've seen on other projects we don't normally get involved with helping um find the grants and that sort of thing that would be more of an APM kind of related Tas okay and I don't know we could certainly ask our consultants if they're aware of any sorts of funds and grants that might be available but yeah we've had a number of projects recently yeah um Hamilton and the town of Wenham uh both it was actually one of the projects was because of the grant uh another the grant presented itself more than halfway through design so it actually changed our system but to the overall projects benefit right is that a state or federal grant that I believe it was Federal yeah what dollar range are we looking at for these grants and hundreds of thousands hundreds of thousands yeah but not tens of millions would it was uh for that project I mean it it was I think between the federal tax incentive and then the grants they're they had most of their hbac system costs covered right it's a big chunk when it can be yeah 15% of your overall building costs right and right now we're working with um clients whose building we finished in 2023 but they are looking to get tax credits for the geothermal system that they put in and so we're working with their tax advisers now to put together the information so they can get that uh tax benefit for the system they put in you've uh you know there were previous reports done you know um what's your opinion of them uh they looked like they were pretty thorough I thought for the one that was done in 20 20 I believe or 2022 I I mean ones that I think that I think are the code analysis yeah and um land vest did some cost and programmatic things as I remember so I would hope we're not Reinventing the wheel us too that's why I think the kickoff meeting would be very important to sit down and go through those previous reports so that we don't duplicate efforts especially if there were things in there that you found that weren't helpful or weren't beneficial we don't want to do those again so um but I think they did have some good information in there like landvest I think estimated the value of the property for the old high school at 11 million so that's good to know you know right off the bat sold yeah if someone approach us we would sell it that it's not really worth I don't think truly in the market that you could get that value from it but but the overall report was was good yeah and I think that all of them have a lot of really good information in them and even the studies that what could be done with the old high school building are useful knowing that even if you move all the town offices over there you'd still have an excess of 24,000 square feet at least right yeah so so knowing that already kind of gives us a little bit of feedback already you know maybe we need to think about something else and do things a little differently we had a general scope in the RFP what changes to that scope would you suggest going forward as we look at a contract is there anything in particular that you really missed or is there anything that you'd like to see different or nothing that I would want to see different I mean it seems like you have a list of things that you need to understand as a town in order to make decisions and I think our job is to kind of help you work through those and assess that and as talking if something comes up or if we learn something through the programming process then we can talk about if those are the right goals I think it's something that could be kind of massaged as we work together and just learn more about you know what your needs are does anyone have any other questions at all or than thank you very much for presentation most appreciate absolutely we appreciate you coming down a lot of work to do these things you know to in particular the traffic was just crazy that's why Bill isn't here you know but I came just from Norwell and um I left there at 4:30 and oh yeah you'll get to Westport no problem it took me almost two hours a Wednesday you it's just you I know yeah there's something in the air because it was like backed up the whole W I'm glad I made it thank you very much and I think bill will be sending you um PDFs of the presentation that we went over that be help all right thank you very much even everybody thank you have uh next item on the agenda is anything uh not recently anticipated I don't believe I have anything so with that I'll entertain a motion to adjourn so just before we adjourn just on the process moving forward um we're going to meet soon to R decision or thank you um so it is it would be my intention to meet uh obviously not next week um but uh very shortly after that it would be my intention to have a remote meeting uh to discuss uh well first of all I want I want the opportunity for any committee members that were not able to attend to be able to to see the presentations um and and basically I'd like to call a remote meeting to have a vote of of which one to recommend um of course there could be discussion involved in in that as well um but anticipating uh my own my own travel schedule as well as this travel schedule I know of some other people uh would like to do the next one remote probably the first week of December if that's agreeable just my opinion is I think remote meetings have diminishing um value um and um especially for discussions and deliberations for quick business checkin uh fast reports they're good but I think that this is a pretty weighty decision and I'm I would not be in favor of making this decision and remote discussion I agree also me I agree to that though another thing frankly I'm not crazy about I understand the timing but wait two weeks to have a discussion about this is everything well I mean I made some notes here I don't know if anybody else did but after two weeks it's um we're all going to sort of forget about what the high and low points of each one of these presentations are I would suggest you know sit down for five minutes at your computer and write a couple notes to the committee and say look based on what I saw last night or yesterday I thought team a was strong hair weak hair steam otherwise well let me ask you this um I would be perfectly willing to have a meeting on Monday night uh to follow up that the one thing I do want to make sure is that the individuals that were not able to be present have a chance to view the uh the recording of the of the meeting so I I I the individuals that were not able to be here tonight I want them to have a chance to view the recording of the meeting and the presentation should they then tell them to look at it so what I'm I I say again if if I I I would be perfectly willing to have an inperson meeting next Monday night if if the committee agrees with would would agree with that I can do Monday that works that's then we'll get we'll go ahead and call it get agenda together very quickly then what time would you be meeting uh probably uh obviously there's no select board meeting so I mean we could do six o'clock if everyone's agreeable to that so I'm okay at 3:00 I'm AIG I'm a big fan get sooner rather than later I don't yes ma'am is there any possibility to get the information out there so the public can come I know you want the public to come can we get find a way to get it out there um so they can hear that hear that meeting absolutely I mean I just putting it on the website is not enough I agree if we could get some details we could try to do it on Facebook and other places if you'd like to put something together and put it on Facebook and neighborhoods associations and things like that so that we can get people because you want people to come well why can't we why can't we Zoom this have a meeting and put it on the TV would like to be here do do do do we um I'm confused because I I those are all great ideas for doing sh threats and for moving the process along what we're doing is we're discussing the selection of a of a consultant to manage the process and we're not doing the process we're just making a decision about awarding a contract we're looking that's what we're doing is evaluating understand that looking to build community as excitement and get it going well I I certainly not opposed to as many as well but I think we're under the constraints of time here exactly you know with a holiday with travel schedules of people and as John mentioned I think it is important to get some of our fresh thoughts yeah vote on it and take action on on some of the thoughts so um at least if we could get information out about this meeting because this was very important because you heard but the two candidates were saying let get that out there so people who know this is happening would would so would your recommendation be for I don't know the town clerk page to I you you mentioned Facebook I'm just trying to um what what would you think what would you say would be the best Avenue to get it out because I I do agree I'd love for more more people but I mean another media all of them well this meeting can be posted to Facebook so yes so the announcement of our future meting yeah that's is time you're right because Monday is so close it's also better if we have some like two weeks to plan and we know where the future meetings are going to be I think to get more people coming like Monday is not good for me me either yeah so that's okay I mean I'm just saying I I'll look at look at what I what I will say is that we get to the point of of actually having needing the community input on once we've selected I guess a vendor that when that process goes absolutely it needs to be as we we want as many people here as possible um for this particular meeting which would be just to select uh select a vendor uh based on these presentations um I I I do like the idea of doing it quicker rather than later uh but uh I this was more of a next week being Thanksgiving type situation here so but if if the committee is willing to meet in person next Monday and I'll certainly do whatever I can to disseminate that uh Beyond uh just just a posting uh but if well I I think on your agenda just posted something very detailed and then they could you know take it wherever you want to take it you know um because some you know the Consultants were talking about that Community engagement I mean that's going to happen when we decide on the consultant that once we get absolutely absolutely so okay so I'll just I'll we'll go ahead and set the next meeting for uh for Monday night at 6:00 um and I will uh get that to you couldn't do early or you um I can't do earlier I earlier would be earlier would be difficult on Monday okay for sure um I think I think six o'clock's probably is as good as we can get it for this one uh I doubt anybody wants to go later so I think six o'clock it is so all right I believe there is is a motion uh to adjourn but I am waiting on a second oh Excuse me yes sir sorry for the last minute can I absolutely fire away please last minut I have a question unexpectedly so what is it you guys are thinking a building knowledge building committee with my tax dollars that's what very simply what is it you thinking a building I'm curious I think in a building did you right so the they're proposing something kick something what this this uh what we are are have been evaluating our two uh vendors that responded to a request for proposals to evaluate Town buildings and the the old high school yes main like that that it's a comprehensive study as to um part of part of the a large part of the equation is what to do with the old high school building but it also does involve to be like a new spense go in school and takes up like four blocks I I I somehow I just don't see that happening yes my tax days getting I'm getting a little nervous this Republican Sweep with Trump and everything all there everybody in place I'm going be tired you get a little nervous if I could just for the for the public uh the the documentation that was referenced tonight the previous studies uh and the like are all listed if you go to the town website and go to the long-term building committee site on there uh you can find all documentation there so I just yes thank you thank you very much all right so once again there is a motion to adjourn on the table that has not been seconded there is now a second all those in favor I all opposed hearing none this meeting is adjourned thank you very much