Working Group To Review CFAL Plans

CHATHAM – A new working group was scheduled to meet this week with the team developing plans to renovate the Center for Active Living to provide input on efforts to reduce the expected cost of the project.

Two weeks ago officials revealed that new estimates indicated the renovation project could cost as much as $2.6 million more than the $5 million appropriated at town meeting in May. Officials indicated that unpredictability in the construction industry and uncertainty over tariffs are making it difficult to arrive at a reliable cost estimate.

Appointed by Town Manager Jill Goldsmith, the CFAL building working group will review and provide input on design plans for the facility as they are finalized prior to going out to bid, expected to happen around Nov. 14. 

The working group includes select board member Stuart Smith, council on aging board chair Patricia Burke, Friends of the Council on Aging board chair Robin Zibrat, finance committee chair Stephen Daniel and contractor Bob Stello.

The group will work with owners project manager Rick Pomroy; Kurt Raber, architect/designer from consultant Catalyst Architecture and Interiors; and town staff including Projects and Operations Administrator Terry Whelan and Director of Community Services Leah LaCross.

An initial meeting was scheduled for Wednesday, after The Chronicle’s deadline. The working group meetings will be held in public and its schedule posted on the town’s website, Goldsmith said at the Oct. 14 select board meeting.

“Hopefully this will get us where we need to go and in time for a bid to be issued that reflects the appropriate design,” she said.

Burke said she thought the working group was a good approach to the situation and hoped that, together with the design team, members could help reduce the estimated cost of the project. Going back to town meeting for additional funding would be a risky approach, she added.

“We’ve done that so many times,” she said, referring to multiple proposals for a new council on aging facility that have failed to get the support of voters.

For years, the council on aging has tried to secure support for a new building to house its programs, which serve more than half of the town’s population. While just about every attempt to secure funding at town meeting has been met with support from a majority of voters, most of the votes fell short of the two-thirds majority needed to borrow construction money. 

The COA was housed in at least five different locations over the years. The existing facility on Stony Hill Road, now known as the Center for Active Living, was never well suited to the department; originally a residential structure, its spaces are poorly suited to the agency’s programs and there have been structural problems almost since it was first occupied.

For a number of years the COA took a backseat to infrastructure projects for other town departments, including the police station and annex, a new fire station and upgrades to the public works building. After a 2015 needs assessment, there was general agreement that a new senior center would better serve the COA and the town’s seniors than renovating the Stony Hill Road building. When attention finally turned to identifying a site for a new senior center, the select board went through a number of options before settling on town-owned land on Middle Road.

Plans for a $6.6 million, single-story 10,150-square-foot structure failed at the May 2019 annual town meeting by a 284-219 vote, short of the required two-thirds majority. Most of the opposition centered around what some felt was the remote location, away from other town facilities and support services.

The following year, developer William Marsh of Eastward Companies offered land at 1610 Main St. as a site for a new senior center. In a January special town meeting, voters accepted the donation of the 1.3-acre parcel as well as appropriating $130,000 for designs and cost estimates for a facility on the property, located in the heart of West Chatham. A group of residents didn’t care for that site, either, and proposed Monomoy School District land on Stepping Stones Road instead (the same land where affordable housing is now proposed). The 11,000-square-foot building proposed for 1610 Main St. was estimated to cost $8.2 million, while the Stepping Stones plans were projected to cost $8.4 million.

A vote on both plans was postponed due to COVID. When town meeting finally addressed the issue in June, the $8.3 million request for the 1610 Main St. site failed to get the required two-thirds majority by 98 votes. Most of the criticism focused on the size of the building and the location. There was no motion on the Stepping Stones Road proposal. 

Officials returned to the drawing board and investigated several other possible sites, including the former Chatham Health and Swim Club, but attention always came back to the West Chatham location. The plans for 1610 Main St. were revised, and the building was redesigned with a $10.6 million price tag. At the May 2023 annual town meeting, the project once again failed to reach the necessary two-thirds margin, this time by a single vote. But a ballot question at the subsequent annual town election passed, and officials used that support as justification for bringing the project — now estimated to cost $11 million — back to voters at a September special town meeting. It failed again, falling 105 votes short of the two-thirds majority.

After extensive discussions, the select board decided to focus efforts on renovating the existing facility, by now dubbed the Center for Active Living. Officials found a way around the two-thirds vote impediment by drawing the $5 million estimated cost of renovations from free cash, which required only a simple majority of town meeting voters to pass. At this past May’s annual town meeting, voters approved the project 440-88, six years after the first COA building project was rejected.

On Oct. 7, town officials announced that initial estimates put the project $2.6 million over budget. Unless the number can be winnowed down, the cost of renovating the existing CFAL building could be higher than it would have cost to build a brand new facility on Middle Road, and just slightly less than the 1610 Main St. proposal.

A second meeting of the working group is tentatively scheduled for Wednesday, Oct. 29, at 11 a.m. at the annex.