City of Newburyport HIRES ARCHITECTs to DEVELOP SCHEMATIC PLANS FOR SENIOR CENTER
The City of Newburyport has hired Sterling Associates in partnership with EGA Architects to develop schematic plans and itemized cost estimates for the community’s Senior Center. The City anticipates adapting and transforming the old Bresnahan School building into a new Senior Center once Newburyport builds a new elementary school on land behind the existing school. The new Senior Center will also have Community Center features, such as space for public meetings, the existing indoor basketball court and stage, as well as offices for various social services including Veterans Services.
During the past two months, the City conducted a systematic search for a design team, received eleven submissions and interviewed three well-qualified candidates. Mayor Donna Holaday selected Sterling Associates to provide design services for this project due primarily to Sterling’s specific and extensive experience with the design of senior centers and the renovation and adaptive reuse of old buildings, having designed and overseen the construction of eight senior centers during the past two decades or so. Sterling has also established a partnership for this project with locally based EGA Architects, which has designed over 150 senior housing projects. In addition, the City is hiring Heery International as the Owner’s Project Representative (as required by state law for public building construction projects over $1.5 million) to work in conjunction with the Newburyport Office of Planning and Development to oversee the initiative.
Mayor Holaday said “I am very pleased to hire such experienced designers as Sterling and EGA for our Senior Center project. Many people in our community have been waiting for this project for years, and we finally have a viable and cost-effective approach to getting it done. I am looking forward to it.”
An initial public meeting is scheduled for Thursday January 12th, 2012 at 7:00 p.m. in the auditorium of Newburyport’s City Hall. The objective of this phase of the project is to confirm the use and programming of a centralized Senior Center for Newburyport, obtain comprehensive information about the existing building’s conditions, and then develop schematic plans and itemized cost estimates prior to the debt exclusion vote for both the school and senior center projects in the spring of 2012.
Services for Newburyport seniors have been based out of a small rented space at the Salvation Army for the past 25 years. The space is inadequate for Newburyport’s 2000+ seniors, and various services have had to be scattered throughout the community at the library, the hospital, various churches, the Elks Club, the Merrimack Place retirement center, etc. By reusing a portion of the shell of the old Bresnahan School building to create a centralized, coherent, welcoming space for seniors, the City will save millions of dollars compared to new construction of a comparable facility. In addition, the site is centrally located off of High Street, has hosted a civic use for many decades, and has ample room for parking. Once Newburyport builds a new elementary school on the public land behind the existing Bresnahan building, the old building will be available for partial demolition, gutting, and a complete transformation into the new Senior Center.
The community has outgrown the old Bresnahan School, and is currently using “temporary” modular additions that are well past their expiration date. Newburyport’s 500 school children attending this school need more and better space. After years of applications, the City was approved this year to become part of the Massachusetts School Building Authority’s Model School Program, which will provide approximately half of the funding for the construction of the new school and save the City many millions of dollars. There will never be a better time to pursue both of these projects. A positive vote in the spring will allow both projects to move forward with final design and then building of the elementary school in 2013-2014. Once the building is available, the Senior Center would then be built around 2015.
