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NORTHBRIDGE, Mass. – The Northbridge Board of Selectmen received just one bid in a request for proposals for a building or buildings that could be modified to fit the needs of the Department of Public Works.
That bid came from Douglas Road Associates LLC, 371 Douglas Road, for $995,000. It is a 19,000-square-foot building in a central location that meets all other specifications in the request for proposals, Town Manager Theodore Kozak said. Kozak opened the bid Friday at noon with DPW Director James Shuris and Building Inspector James Sheehan.
Town officials looked at the Douglas Road property as an option to replace the current DPW facility on Fletcher Street about two years ago, but its price was considered too high. The price was lowered around the same time the cost of redeveloping the Fletcher Street site was revealed.
HKT Architects conducted a feasibility study that showed the DPW could stay at the current site despite its proximity to the Mumford River, but pegged the cost of redevelopment at $8 million.
Selectmen agreed an $8 million proposal was not likely to get a favorable vote from taxpayers, so instructed the Building, Planning and Construction Committee to look for other options.
In addition to the Douglas Street property, garages on Linwood Avenue were also discussed as an option, but the owner of that property did not respond to the request for proposals.
An article on the Oct. 23 fall annual town meeting asks voters to purchase property and buildings for a DPW headquarters. Whether the purchase has the support of selectmen and the Finance Committee may hinge on the cost to modify the building that Shuris has said will need a thicker floor with drainage and higher and wider vehicle doors.
Shuris expects to have the cost of modifying the building to his needs for the Building, Planning and Construction Committee at its meeting on Oct. 4.
The Oct. 23 town meeting article only addresses purchase of a building. Money to fund modifications would have to go before voters at afuture special election or the spring town meeting in May.
Comments (8)
'Excellent Comments' Mr. Davis!
Jack,
If at any point in the past on this forum I did not give your group the credit or respect that it deserves..........................I apologize. I have known you personally for a long time and I know that you and Neil are well qualified to do the task at hand.
As a citizen and a taxpayer who has an extensive working knowledge of what the people at the DPW do day in and day out my concern(s) lie in what things your group may have value engineered out of your proposal in an effort to save money. Given the difference in prices between $2M vs. $8M (even setting aside the difference in the amount of sq. ft. as well as the gap caused by prevailing wage vs. non prevailing wage) there obviously has to be a bunch of differences between the two designs. One can only deduce that it is the result of the modification or deletion of items that your group likely thought was unneccessary from the HKT design.
You have made reference in several of your other comments to the fact that " The DPW is a group of employees cutting our lawns, striping our roads, plowing snow, repairing or clearing sidewalks and other jobs to keep our town beautiful and safe...........This may be a revelation to you and others but other than the Director a secretary and the maintenance person the personnel work outside. The buildings are to store vehicles and equipment and provide a space for maintenace of same."
I honestly don't know the answer to the following question and would imagine that you do. Does the Mitchell team design include columns in the garage bays? Also did the HKT design use beams/trusses/whatever that allowed for an entirely open area? My presumption is that they are different and changes like those in the design of construction methods are the types of things that have helped lead to the large disparity in the numbers between the two proposals.
I ask this question because of the way that you (and others) keep insisting that the buildings are used primarily for vehicle storage. Have you ever tried to park and "store" a 40k gvw dumptruck with a 12ft. wide, 4000lb piece of steel hanging off of the front of it? Have you ever tried it with another 2500lb wing plow hanging off of the right side of it that all but eliminates your field of vision to that side? If you haven't, you should try it sometime, and when you do be sure that when you do attempt it that the truck is covered with snow and ice and that you had just been working for the past 24 to 30 hours eating only food that comes from fast food joints and may very well be hours old by the time you had a chance to eat it.
Maybe once you have done a bunch of the tasks these individuals who you say are "cutting our lawns, striping our roads, plowing snow, repairing or clearing sidewalk" etc. are asked by us to do and do it in the same conditions that they are required to do it in...................then maybe, just maybe you (and others) would have a much better appreciation for and truer understanding for if they spec out a building that may vary from your groups idea of what is sufficient. Given their experience in what they do for a living it should come as no surprize that their design may have; doors that are larger, bays that are bigger, or feature a design with fewer or no columns, it may even have a lighting design that may be more than what your group thought was prudent. Those are just a few of the types of things that I suspect that may be different than the ones that a group of well intentioned citizens may have spec'd out because they feel that they can do it cheaper and better.
And to Juggy and all of the McDonalds know-it-alls and problem solvers (Jack I am not lumping you into this), you should take a more objective look at a bunch of items that tyou percieve as being luxuries. You need to keep in mind that these guys aren't storing Buicks, Taurus' & Carolla's. The pesky pole that you have to remember to not hit your car door on in your garage at home? That is no where near the same as trying to remember to dodge and avoid things like that in a plow truck, loader, backhoe, sidewalk machine etc... after a long and greuling shift.
Just keep all of that in mind when making presumptions and assertions that the Taj-mahal is what was proposed.
Jack, I give your group credit but I honestly don't think your group gives the people they are designing a building for any where near enough credit.
Just a Guy:
There is no apology needed by anyone, either you or me. I at no time intended any negative comments to town employees regardless of where they work or what they do and I hope that is not what you are inferring despite how you put some of your comments especially “once you have done a bunch of the tasks”.
Do you actually feel we designed an inferior product without the needs of the people who will use it just to cut costs?
I hope not.
In regard to your questions, I forwarded your comments and here are our responses.
Value engineering and differences in design:
1. We do not have the two mechanical spaces as we have roof top units, space heaters and an electrical panel.
2. We do not have the 10 x 10 emergency electrical panel room nor the 10 x 10 telephone/data room. We have no idea why a simple building requires four different rooms with almost 600 square feet of space.
3. We do not have the 10% gross area adjustments on all required spaces as it is not needed.
4. We do not have the 5% to 20% areas for circulation which is usually put into more demanding spaces like offices, etc. We have a total of 5% which is standard for this type of building.
5. We have office space for all the functions spelled out in the original program developed by the BPCC and the former DPW director. A representative of the BPCC sat with all town employees who would be using the facility and sought their input. This is an important point as it makes mute those who say they did not want to relocate to the WWTP. We were assured that everyone had input and were on board with the move to Providence road.
6. Our design is engineered to the spaces required and does not have the 10% gross area adjustments.
7. If you eliminate all the program inflations in the new design and the unnecessary rooms (our design restricts our room usage to those specified in the program) you end up close to our original square footage.
Prevailing wages: This continues to be mentioned and those who do it continue to be wrong. We had prevailing wages, as mandated by the AG’s office when we sought her approval, and as mandated by law. Let’s put this one to rest once and for all.
Columns: The design that we received five bids for at an average of one million dollars uses rigid frames that span the width of the building to eliminate interior columns. This actually added a little to our costs but also allowed design optimization to get efficiency in the loading to optimize the basic frame. This means we had a complete open space for vehicle storage.
Personnel needs: Our design had separate crew facilities for men and women with a kitchen, eating room, changing room and showers for those long, cold snowy nights clearing our roads. We also had separate men and women rooms for the office staff.
Park and store vehicles: A member of the team had actual turning radii of all the major pieces of equipment and the site and building were situated to those dimensions. Also, and this is important to note, our design was for drive through. At no time would any driver have to worry about turning and backing into a space unless they wanted to. We also had 14’ and 16’ doors for easier access. The submitted design for Fletcher street has the vehicles stacked and must be backed in. Also, if one piece of equipment is required from the second row the vehicle in the first row must be moved.
Another note on the storage of the vehicles, our design is with the plows mounted as requested by the former DPW director so that they could be ready to go, from the warm bays, before a storm hits.
Lighting: This is a standard code item and our design would meet or exceed any expectations.
Large disparage in numbers: We feel it is because our design was done to meet the needs of the department without the costs of an architect or the soft costs associated with the other design which totaled over 1.5 million while ours were pro-bono with added costs of $ 168,000.00.
I hope this enlightens some of the citizens who read it and doubt it does anything to convince you-J A G. Some of your questions were written in such a negative way to try and diminish what we have done that I had doubts about even replying.
At least you got me to write some comments without mentioning the Finance Committee (Mr. D’Amato) a committee of one.
Jack,
I was busy lately and hadn't had a chance to see your reply till now.
As far as your comment ....................."I hope this enlightens some of the citizens who read it and doubt it does anything to convince you-J A G. Some of your questions were written in such a negative way to try and diminish what we have done that I had doubts about even replying."
You are wrong, you by way of this forum have enlightend me, quite a bit actually. and I have a better feeling about the project the Mitchell group proposes. I'm not on board just yet but I have far more confidence that by what you describe that it seems to be more comprable to the HKT design than what I originally gave it credit for.
J A G,
I accept you at your word and offer my apology. No excuse, but at times my writing gets too far ahead of my thoughts and I hit send or post too quickly.
I just want the best possible deal for Northbridge. A town I have lived in most of my life and served in many capacities for over 35 years.
Our plan has no personal agenda, just a simple proposal, created pro-bono, at a reasonable cost that solves a problem that has become too politcal. Something that has perplexed us for a long time.
Jack
Those of us who presented our proposal to build at either the WWTP site or on Fletcher street will also be interested in what the BPCC does. We are also interested in knowing and seeing what they determine to be, as the finance committee (Mr. D’Amato?) requests, is a “professional cost estimate”.
The Mitchell team put together numbers from actual quotes by at least five contractors experienced in pre-fabricated, modular construction, by experienced civil engineers in site development, by a structural engineer experienced in all aspects of construction worldwide, by a plumbing designer who has estimated multi-million dollar projects in over 40 years of construction and by a construction manager who has managed pre-fabricated buildings and other more complicated facilities for the government and private industry for over 45 years.
Has anyone asked the qualifications of those asking for our qualifications?
Does anyone on the BPCC, Board of Selectmen or Finance Committee (Mr. D'Amato?) know what a "professional cost estimate" is and who prepares it?
Yes, I am very interested in what our BPCC and Finance Committee (Mr. D’Amato?) determine is a “professional cost estimate” and interested in seeing how it compares to our PROFESSIONAL COST ESTIMATE of 1.8 million dollars for a new, modern, modular DPW facility that can be constructed at either the WWTP or Fletcher street.
We'll also see what the voters want at town meeting.
Jack
Well atleast the town has no one to argue with,its take it or leave it.