By Lynne Smith
At the August 16 Community Center Building Committee meeting, ICON Architecture presented options for the proposed community center. These options will be sent to an estimator for refined costs. In this article, I will focus on Option 3, Adaptive Reuse, estimated to cost up to $12.5 million.
As Lincoln has found in the Town Offices building and in parts of the new Lincoln school, “adaptive reuse” can be beautiful and functional as well as sustainable. The problem with the proposed plan is that ICON has tried to turn three separate buildings into one, responding to the committee’s focus on a single new building. But to accommodate the various stakeholders — COA&HS, PRD, LEAP, and school maintenance — in this low-cost option, adaptive reuse of the separate existing pods makes more sense.
The ICON proposal calls for 6,185 square feet of new construction, including a large lobby and about 4,645 square feet of corridors connecting all three buildings. The lobby, labeled Lincoln Community Room, seems to substitute for a requested activity room. In fact, it appears to be a high-ceilinged architectural statement, similar to the commons room at the new school: beautiful but less functional than simpler activity rooms. The connecting corridors are lower cost than the lobby area per square foot but are still a significant expense. This is a creative architectural effort to turn three buildings into a semblance of one.
I think Option 3, the one that many would vote for, needs more work by ICON and the committee. The committee could allow ICON to develop good adaptive reuse designs for each of the separate buildings (the pods) while committee members further investigate the use of existing spaces in the Lincoln School, the Hartwell building, the First Parish’s stone church, Bemis Hall, and the Pierce House.
To free up about 1,500 square feet in the existing buildings and reduce cost, the school maintenance workshop (shown in Pod A) and the kitchen (shown in Pod B) could be housed separately. Maintenance could be placed in the Hartwell Building (an alternative in all design options). The COA could continue to use the kitchen and dining area of stone church for the Friday senior lunches and for preparation of Meals on Wheels.*
Reducing the proposed building size at the Hartwell campus and focusing on adaptive reuse rather than new construction might actually bring the cost below $12.5 million, allowing funds to be delegated for needed work at Bemis Hall (HVAC) and Pierce House (accessible bathroom).
I urge everyone to find a quiet hour to review the design options, especially Option 3, Adaptive Reuse. I hope there will be improvements to this option prior to the State of the Town meeting on September 30.
*Meals on Wheels is a Minuteman Services function requiring a Minuteman employee to chill, heat, and plate 30-50 meals per day for home delivery. The preparation can easily remain in the stone church kitchen, though a new refrigerator is required there. As for the congregant senior Friday lunches, there are rarely more than 30 people seated in the great hall, which can host many more for special functions. I have attended many of these lunches and enjoyed the beauty of this spacious room.
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Using the First Parish Parish Parish House for the weekly senior luncheon is a real hardship on the COAHS staff. The kitchen is more than adequate and there is plenty of room. However, the staff is required to set up a lot of heavy tables and a lot of chairs, and then put them away again. This option could work if the work of setting up the tables and chairs could be outsourced, and the required cost added to the operational budget.
We have Town janitorial staff.
We also have done these things with volunteers.
Regardless of where Senior Dining is hosted, tables and chairs need to be set up. So the First Parish remains a wonderful, no-cost site dining, and will eliminate the need to replicate this space in a new Center, thus really cutting back the costs for the proposed project, and giving it a chance of passage at Town Meeting.