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A group of Lincoln design professionals wrote a memo to campus planners urging that they consider locating the community center on the current Smith school site rather than on the Hartwell side of campus, but the reaction among community center planners was lukewarm last week.

At its February 14 meeting, the Community Center Preliminary Planning and Design Committee reviewed feedback collected on the initial set of six concepts for a community center. Most popular with residents at the community workshops on January 30 were Schemes 2, 3A, and 3B. The latter two options call for retaining and renovating all three Hartwell pods, but 3B put some of the parking between the main Hartwell building and Lincoln Road where the Strat’s Place playground used to be. Residents and the CCPPDC liked the building shape and location of Scheme 3B and the parking in Scheme 3A, so architect Maryann Thompson will include an illustration with that combination in the next round of designs she’ll present at the March 13 CCPPDC meeting.

The CCPPDC also decided that, regardless of which option is selected, there will not be parking on the Strat’s Place site, and any pods not folded into the community center will be renovated (work that would have to include new windows and bathrooms as well as fire code and handicapped accessibility upgrades). However, that renovation work could be done separately from the community center construction.

“We’re waiting to see what the school [which owns the pods] is going to do with these buildings,” CCPPDC Vice Chair Margit Griffith said. “The community is not necessarily aware of who owns them and who has the right and the budget” to demolish or renovate them.

The Smith idea

The February 12 memo addressed to both the CCPPDC and the School Building Committee addressed several issues with the school and community center proposals. Among its recommendations: putting the community center on the space currently occupied by the old Smith building. That space would be freed up if the town chooses for school option B6, which concentrates the building on the north side of the ballfield. The authors note that there is community interest in preserving the 1953 Smith gym, which has historically appealing wooden rafters and floors as well as a stage.

Sketches of two concepts for a community center on the Smith side of the campus (click to enlarge).

In response to the memo, Thompson presented two options for a west-wide community center, one with 35,400 square feet and the other with 28,600 square feet. A 19,000-square-foot building would be sufficient to meet the needs of the Council on Aging and the Parks and Recreation Department, according to 2014 estimates.

Both plans would be more expensive than any of the east-side proposals due to higher construction and renovation costs associated with the larger footprints, though Thompson did not have exact cost estimates as of last week. Reusing some of the Smith building is also less than ideal for seniors because of the long hallway they would have to traverse. The gym’s acoustical properties also make it problematic for use by seniors, Council on Aging Director Carolyn Bottum noted. Furthermore, despite the larger total footprint, the rest of the community center might actually be a bit squeezed since the gym takes up so much of the space, Thompson added.

“Programmatically this doesn’t work well, according to the earlier community center study committee,” resident Sara Mattes commented. “To spend more money on rehabbing something that doesn’t meet programs needs and requires additional parking, paving over what was going to be green space, seems to be a bit of an anathema.”

“If it was cheaper [than the Hartwell options], then maybe the town would say it’s worth suffering some of the challenges that go along with it, but learning that it’s at least as expensive and maybe more, as well as more expensive on the operating side—I don’t know how we could justify it to the town,” CCPPDC member Tim Christenfeld said.

Of the Smith building, resident Owen Beenhouwer (also an architect) said, “I think it’s a candidate for coming down. I think we need to be building for the future and not just keeping the past half alive.”

Thompson acknowledged that “you would never get a gym like that now” with its wooden rafters and natural light. “I don’t think it should get torn down, but I don’t know what to do with it.”

The memo authors urged the school and community center planners to hold a joint charrette as soon as possible to better coordinate campus planning and discuss possible ways to keep the Smith gym.

The memo was written by Doug Adams, Gary Anderson, Ken Bassett, Lucretia Giese, Ken Hurd, Judith Lawler, Brooks Mostue, David O’Neil, Steven Perlmutter, Dana Robbat, and Peter Sugar. Adams, Bassett, Perlmutter, and Sugar were members of the School Building Advisory Committee that was formed after the 2012 defeat of the school plan that had been accepted for funding by the Massachusetts School Building Authority (MSBA). Giese and Robbat are among the founders of Friends of Modern Architecture/Lincoln.

Adams and Bassett were also members of the “Fireside Seven,” a group of Lincoln architects and designers who developed an L-shaped design alternative after the 2012 vote in hopes of retaining MSBA funding. That alternative was rejected by the agency as being too different from what it had approved originally.

The current layout of the Hartwell area and the available parking on the Ballfield Road campus (click to enlarge).

Residents can see the next round of design ideas for a community center at the regular meeting of the Community Center Preliminary Planning and Design Committee on Tuesday, Feb. 13 at 4:45 p.m. in Hartwell Pod A.

The CCPPDC and architects showed six options at workshops on January 30 with restimated price tages of $13 million to $16.5 million and have been going through comments left by residents on sticky notes. They also welcome feedback via email at CCPPDC@lincolntown.org.

The committee is also working to incorporate the work of the School Building Committee. Early results from the SBC workshops on January 23 indicated that 77 percent of attendees preferred a mostly new school building at an estimated cost of $89.8 million.

The SBC is taking the lead on campus planning because the school is a much larger project and also because the school owns the buildings on the east side of the campus, even those not being used by the Lincoln School. The four buildings on that side—the main Hartwell building and the three pods—collectively house the school district administration, the Lincoln Integrated Preschool, the Magic Garden Children’s Center, the Parks and Recreation office and program spaces, LEAP, storage spaces, and the school’s repair shop.

“There has to be a place for all of these things between the two projects. This is why we’re taking a whole-campus approach to the planning and why the CCPPDC is following the SBC; we’re not at the same design stage on purpose,” said CCPPDC Vice Chair Margit Griffith. “They refine, we refine; we share feedback, they share feedback. Much of what they do will inform our process.”