today is Monday March 25th 2024 and this is a meeting of the senior center site selection and building committee this meeting will be held in person at the location provided on this notice members of the public are welcom to attend this inperson meeting please note that while an option for remote attendance and or participation via Zoom is being provided as a courtesy to the public the meeting or hearing will not be suspended or terminated if technological problems interrupt the virtual broadcast unless otherwise required by law members of the public with particular interest in a specific item on this agenda should make plans for inperson versus virtual attendance accordingly this meeting will be live on Zoom the public May access the proceedings by joining Zoom meeting ID 852 5823 2163 or by calling 92925 6099 for additional information about remote participation please contact Carly antonellis assistant Town manager at ATM a.m. us or 978 772 8220 extension 100 prior to the meeting um so welcome everyone and uh Welcome to our first um architectural firm um can I first get an motion to approve the agenda I move to approve the agenda as written okay second second by Ellen all in favor I great wonderful and um so Committee Member Dave grub is joining us via Zoom tonight and um Robert uh expressed his uh condolences he couldn't make it this evening uh last minute change of plans so Dennis will be our um Note Taker for the evening thank you Dennis for doing that that's tough um all righty so um with that I think we can just a couple of housekeeping notes and then go right on into the interviews um committee you should have three copies of the interview questions one for each firm um as well as I just received um today uh Ellen's um reference checks her write up her summary of the reference check so thank you Ellen for doing that this is great um for any members of the public um watching these two documents will be posted um after the meeting to the website um under our committee all righty um any questions from the committee before we welcome the first I was thinking we could start and go just around the table with our pre-selected set of questions does that make sense um and you'll notice on our form the person who submitted it is in the parenthesis but we can just go around and take turns asking sound good sure all right wonderful so with that our first um group is Abacus welcome thank you so much if you want to come on up and introduce yourself and okay and then bringing up the presentation sure already like here welcome welcome so thank you very much for the opportunity to be here and I have to say this is a familiar room and there are some familiar faces and nothing we would love more than to continue working with you so my name's David Eisen and have been on uh working with you from the beginning to I guess what was a temporary end and you're going to continue U my partner David Pollock who was involved in some of the earlier phases of the project and Julia Patton who um is familiar and has done a lot of the work that got us to the point where um we got to and um delin Kenny also worked on the project and isn't here tonight um so and I just want to note about David is long along with being my partner for 30 some years and most of the firms work is public work with cities and towns a lot like air he's very involved with the town of Brookline and is very knowledgeable about um public design the whole public process and um a real asset uh in those terms great um are we screen so and how should I do a thumbs up for like go to go to the next slide sure okay so go to the next slide um so in in most of the cities and towns we work with public process is an important part of what we do working with committees and and in boards and user groups and Jo's going to talk a bit a bit about that yeah so we've um you know we've all worked together on public process and uh site selection and you know just trying to move this this process forward together um and we're really excited to have the opportunity to continue doing that work with everyone um and one you know we Abacus has worked with over a dozen cities and towns around Massachusetts trying uh to engage the public to work on different projects to just really make sure that everyone um feels heard and brought along in the process of any new building um and as you know as a result of all of that experience we've developed lots of different skills to make sure that everyone feels heard and included um voices are part of the process and that helps to make sure that at the end uh everyone feels excited you know you get you get what you want everyone has had an opportunity to um make their voices heard uh and so what you're seeing on the screen here is different ways that we've done that um the upper the upper right hand corner is us uh actually presenting to a um but then in other in other ways um we have smaller meetings larger meetings uh have uh ways of reaching out virtually for people who might be unable to attend meetings at any given time um and as a result of that um you know the process we can go to the next slide please um you know during that process we bring lots of different ideas to the table and present lots of uh you know how what is the Vision that this community wants for every new building um you know what is what is the thing that you see what is the thing you don't see uh and we collect all of that data at the end of all the different meetings and public processes and you know engagement that we do uh we collect that data we analyze it and then we can present it back and say these are the words of of your town this is the things that matter to you most and this is how we're prepared to give it to you and there really May kinds of public engagement we generally um participate in and you know every city in town is different some towns say well really we'll take care of that we just want you to work with the committee on the board so it's very much up to our clients how much engagement there is so programming is one component of this but also site selection is important component of this so you have a sense early in the process whether people support this whether people don't and often it's not unanimous one way or the other but find out what the issues are early in the process and again it is very much to our clients but we are available to be part of this and one of the things we can be the sort of sword and shield for people like you because at the end of the day we go back to Cambridge and we go back to Brookline and um we can speak out in way sometimes people who live or can't what we say is always tied into the work of the committee but again that's one role we play honest Brokers we don't have a dog in any fight all we're trying to do is what's best for a towned client so next um next image so cost is a big issue and kind of public construction is running and this is a scary number 1,000 bucks a square foot it's astounding how much it cost so we may do programming with you and you need a 16,000 uh square foot um COA oh but there's only 12,000 uh uh $12 million 12,000 $12 million available and so this is an example from um Orleans we did a range of different sizes and a range of different programs at different price points and and at different square footages and on the bottom is the numbers and the words but in some ways what people read the most effectively are floor plans you know what do you actually get for that money so we can zero in on what's needed but also what um what a Town's willing to pay for uh and next um and in most of the um cities and towns we working we look at multiple sites and um this is Southampton actually we looked at eight different sites we focused on these four and we dig pretty deeply and really interested in the sites that you've come up with but but but but we can leave that to to later but it's very much a part of the process for example for these sites we did detailed layouts of uh what could be located there and then the next image so we feel like transparency is really really important where the recommendations come from so in this case so here are all all two all eight sites at at the top and on the vertical column are a series of criteria we use to judge those sites and some of it was physical issues locational issues how easy or hard would it be to address the programmatic issues on those sites and the um third site from the left that right green green is good red is bad yellow is someplace in between so everybody knows why the committee with our involvement advised on this site or the other and this was there's more participation than just the committee there's a fair amount of Outreach on what these criteria should be and you know thumbs up down and in the middle you know what's a fair of valuation help build a consensus for the direction forward on next slide so we've done a lot of work in air uh the first pass and um we looked at six different sites just getting a sense of what would fit or not fit in there sort of a very preliminary look and you know ultimately you know these most of these sites dropped away when we kind of uh dug into it um next but then we added to the list and we weeded out that list and looked at these four sites in detail uh Main Street on the lower right lot of excitement about that contamination issues and that dropped off the list and you know those are the kinds of things we we dig into early let's find out you know if there's a land mine underneath the surface Let's uh let's bring it to the surface earlier in the process a gron street upper right you know no landmines but it was pretty tight their Wetlands on the left limited building space limited parking great it's near the center of town not so great that there you know couldn't couldn't expand um upper left Park Street um that looked pretty good but there were Wetland issues there were all kinds of sight issues then it end up not being viable and then per Park um looked really good until it didn't and again figuring out is there support for it what are the cost benefits that kind of CH chart early in the process can can um you know have figured out early so but these are the kinds of drawings we do these are the kinds of layouts we do and with C parking spaces and square footages and and will it actually work and and you you know uh what do the traffic and parking what are the traffic issues are the toes we're stepping on these are critical issues near the center of town is that great near the edge of town those are all the questions we ask next and so this is just these are all Sites we looked at here so at this point and this also includes another in Deon and I think we're leaving out three or four but at this point we know uh we know we pretty well um we certainly know the places that don't work and um can help you figure out the ones that do work next and we bring more General capability sometimes early in the feasibility um study process these aren't important but you know sustainability resiliency more and more we're asked at very initial meetings so if you looked at this and that in terms of those issues so we've done lead we've done passive house uh building code is really demanding we've been looking at water source heat pump AE Source heat pumps so we have familiarity with all of those systems when it get to the point where those are the questions you want to talk about in terms of get you know getting things built uh next and Universal Design there's yes there's Ada there's maab you need to meet the letter of the law but there's also how do you bring people together rather than separate them by in the ways that you develop sites and bring people into the building so all four of these are up here because they're on relatively steep sites and we made we reworked all of these to make them as easy to enter easy to leave as possible with everyone together there isn't a separate route for the wheelchair you know low slopes as opposed to Ziggy zaggy ramps um these are important in any public building but especially in the senior center next and this is the last image we've done a lot of this kind of work um there's a lot of stuff we haven't shown here what we're doing in Bill r with with with David grub in the head of the COA I think that was in some of the material um we've done a lot of this every Town's different there's some generalized principles we've learned um the number one General Mor's principle is you listen to the client you listen to the town that's the starting point for all of this and then we can bring the appropriate skills to the table to help get you to where you want to go so that's that's who we are and um look forward to questions great thank you um so I think we have a prepared set of questions um do we want to I can ask the first one we just go around the table um does your firm have a preference for a senior center design with the entire building on one floor or can a satisfactory design of a senior center be accomplished with a building on two floors yes uh David Pollock um generally if it's not too if depend also depends on the size of the facility how much it stretches out but but I think there's some we've in general I think single story works pretty well in terms of managing uh staff uh uh and FTE and being really efficient um however in in Bill R they actually um two floors preferred two floors prefer um you know splitting the staff up a little we're working with um with the city of of attelboro they also this you know the the COA director and the staff like the idea of kind of having uh staff on two different floors um so you know we listen and follow follow your lead um there's it it's awfully easy to get around you don't have any fire stairs you don't you know you don't have to you don't have an elevator um you know those aren't those aren't costs that like Drive the whole budget for sure but um and in b r it was a small site in the perfect location the only way it worked was two floors and and um they headed the co way said you know what I actually like it this way they have a two Center a two Floor Center now and they've gotten used to it and theyve split up really the sort of Social Work and counseling is on the second floor where there's more privacy the general Administration is on the ground floor you know it's like a house the quiet calmer stuff is on the second floor and the noisier stuff is so there's no rain answer and we'll ask the questions and show the the tradeoffs But ultimately it has to do do with the land as well I mean in you know I mean again all my town service for the last 30 years is in Brookline which is now our biggest town since Framingham became a city about 5 years ago and we have a three-story Senior Center cuz that's it like it's right there in the middle of coolage corner on Center Street and that's what you got like it just you know you got in the answer to the second question is easy yes oh good it's better to be in the center of town and it's better to be at the edge of town it all depends on the location and what people you're looking for and David you you've looked at these issues a lot the trade off and usually is uh took it off similar kinds of trade well let somebody's going to ask a question just figured out you very often we're um we're at to look at exactly these two options the center of town tends to be smaller more limited parking but everybody's there in the edge of town There's um more space um there's more parking and for different people and that kind of evaluation criteria chart is a good way to assess that and it's not just the duality of um center of town versus edge of town it's all of the things that come with that proximity to Natural areas um traffic jams you know where's the center of gravity where people live outdoor outdoor programming is a room for outdoor Garden you know like landscape programming for for for that part of the senior center whatever you know whatever you put there if there's if if there's more land you can you can do more of that I mean but if there you know it's also like very Town specific is there a hangout or you know a lunch andette where people like to you know that you know I mean in Brooklyn it's like the Busy Bee you know or whatever and being near that may may mean a lot to people to you know how do you build community and this is often a good reason to crowdsource this you know we can say oh center of town that's in the the middle of everything what a great place and other world people will say well the people who use the COA they don't really like going Downtown they really like shopping at the shopping mall um and it's like okay the center of town isn't really where people want to be so we always want to cross check certainly our understandings and even even committees sometimes can not understand what uh thousand other people are thinking can we can can we follow up on this stuff how do you want to do it I yeah I think we can yeah so air being a small town that kind of that question was a little loaded because for instance in Groton which is a big town their senior center is way out of town I was thinking in in air there may not be a way out of town it may always be fairly close to town because the town itself is small um so I was qu guessing on a mile basis do you guys having a guess on a mile how many miles from downtown in other words if it's only two miles from downtown or a mile and a half is it still okay to be closer to down toown is that still within the range of being fairly close oh you know it's just all about the land if it's all about the land it's all the the a lot of the attraction of being in the Town Center is you know is the the term walkability Y and not being reliant on cars in some towns you actually have senior housing significant uh uh uh number of senior apartments or or 55 plus facilities you know however they're structured financially and and so the you may have more walkability for seniors not right in the middle of town cuz that's not where the senior housing is but you know in probably in air a lot of the seniors are still living in their houses and you know some significant number are still driving and then how do they get around so I think Transit access whether people drive themselves whether their family members drive them whether it's near the school so you kind of have multitasking with in the library dropping kids off and or you know you know what there's a lot of convenience involved a lot of questions about Community about how do you build community okay thanks you want to read the second third one yeah the third one good okay um third question as a public building there will be many particular interests seeking to have their ideas implemented how do you navigate conflicts between competing interests while maintaining the architectural and design Integrity of the structure do you have examples of successfully navigating competing interests in other communities well we're all always navigating between competing interests because projects we do are just a slice of the world we live in and listening respectfully talking respectfully um having a dialogue between different people mediating between different people I mean we are kind of honest Brokers and then that kind of chart and then the community outreach so everyone feels heard and then being able to say this is what we're hearing and if there's Common Ground we're hearing you're saying this and you're saying saying saying this and as if they're in conflict with each other but here's here's what we are proposing or what we're hearing is a possible Common Ground between them it's really kindergarten stuff um but you can be 80s years old and you have not learned your kindergarten stuff we're all we're all a bit a bit like that but it's really about listening and being respectful um and I would say it's also about leadership um in you know Bill Rea a lot of competing needs and interests and the town manager sort of said the is what we're going to do and then he went through a whole process so um we can provide one kind of leadership with the outside in leadership but there's the inside out leadership who's going to make this their their own and um help find the common ground uh in a way we can't always do that as Outsiders it's your experts on air we're experts on planning and design and you bring those together did you well I was going to yeah I was going to say one one great thing about the public Outreach process is it helps so there's a picture that we showed in the presentation that was from Air itself where what we've learned over the process is some voices happen to be bigger than others but no idea is bigger than others right and so making sure that everyone's ideas get out there and what so making it available for everyone to voice what they think um and so the image I'm referring to is a Post-It note exercise where every single person writes their answer to a series of questions you know in this case it might be what you know program is the most exciting to you and that is real data that you can then line up and present back to the community and it becomes very obvious what things are the most important and what things are less important and no voice in a situation like that becomes bigger than another um and taking that set of data you can then provide it back and say okay here you know here's we need to make a building you know here's our options like here's our budget here's our site and here's the great this like you know set of things will serve the greatest amount of people based on the input we've gotten from you um and you know in in that way it makes it kind of easier to form a solution and a you know a path forward because it's very clear like you've all participated and here's the best we can do with it one one of the most remarkable uh exercises that we've done in terms of having the people's voice uh resonate definitively was when we did site selection for what in that case happened to be a multigenerational center for the town of Lincoln and um we we we started out with five town-owned sites and we went through the whole exercise of all the things you've seen schematic design and you know the whole public process and then Lincoln has an annual town meeting in the spring and they have something called state of the town in the fall in which they take up one or two big questions and have a have a a town meeting but it's not like a whole warrant they'll just have on a Saturday morning in the in the fall so this was at state of the town we presented uh the five sites and then we put boards on the in the school auditorium for each site up and when everybody showed up uh they got two little round stickers every single member who came every single resident who came to town meeting got two stickers and throughout the whole presentation and after they would wander up onto the side stage and put their stickers where they wanted to put the the the center and at the end of our presentation you looked around and there were like four boards with just a smattering of stickers and one board was completely concealed behind all of the stickers it was done you know we were like okay now we know mhm the people have spoken and they didn't there didn't need to be any second guessing or anything I took a picture of that put it up on the website and did you would you have known ahead of time I guess it was sort of clear but but no we had knowing it was going to be that that overwhelming we didn't know that yeah okay um when choosing a site for a senior center what do you see as the top three most important considerations that will encourage use of the building in terms of size location topography ease of access Etc then it looks like the place you want to be that it's exciting that it's interesting you go by at night you look in the window and it's like oh my gosh I'd like to be inside there on a nice day you go by and people are hanging out on the outside it's everybody wants to fun it draws you in what's that it draws it draws you in and and there is a second component to that as much as as seni sers are about social life and engagement and meeting they're vulnerable people and who need privacy so carved out within that you know you have a place for someone to you know lay out the you know the challenges they're having in life so so that's a little bit later that's after you walk in the door and and and and look around but that's sort of everything you imagine you want do you can you can do their do their their their activities so this is where location comes in if it is in a place where a lot of people see it you are much more likely to have people I'm never going to a senior center and you say oh my gosh there's my buddy Joe I why why why don't why don't I go inside so um you know first you make it visible through the loc location and then you make it visible through the um design and I think that that really helps and you know when we interviewed for this job four and a half years ago one of the discussions is Center for active living um should it be a center of active living rather than a senior center and that's about branding but but but that helps too um you know um that helps you know get people interested or at least not turn them off like I'm not going to a senior center um that's the first thing is to not say this is not for you this is not for me and then the second thing is to you know bring them in the door however you can and then reward reward them from coming in the door whe I mean you pretty much hit the nail on the head I think with that um in in term I mean the other thing is just programming right like what what is the community want to be doing and getting them to a place to do it and then visibility I think is it's always you know at a restaurant people usually get sat closer to windows at the beginning right so the restaurant looks busy and then more people want to go in and it's the same idea is making sure that there's programming that brings people in friendships can you know continue to flourish and bond and you see people and then more people want to come and you know that's and then making it comfortable and friendly and a good place to be so you Topography is on the list adbor the new Senior Center or the adapter reuse senior center it's like on top of a hill and so it's interesting that topographer EP is unlikely but everyone feels like this is a good place to be it's fun and exciting and and what on a spectacular setting uh they were able to acquire uh for what to me is astonishingly short money on nine-hole golf course that had been prively held and finally you know ran its course and they Town had a right of first refusal so the everybody you know went to a wedding in the clubhous and everything on the golf course and so that's going to be repurposed for the senior center so there's all this already uh Community attachment to the building and it's not really on a hill it's actually on a like a a little um plinth or like an acropolis that's about 15 ft tall which is where they pile all the dirt in the ' 50s when they built the you know out of the the the water hazards and the the ponds you know they like built this little anyway um but the question was about what are the three most uh important criteria for site selection I think you know how do you how do you decide what encourage use of the building oh to encourage use of the building um okay yeah you know part of it also gets to really Mission focus and programming because the for Senior Center today the conversation is really interesting because it spans this gamut from on the one hand this CER for active living notion and to sort of lower the the the the median age of the participants and get it together and have it be a community center focused on serving uh older community members but you know a lot of uh communities are really interested in this getting the the 60s somethings and the 50s somethings in there but the council on Aging you know brief and Mission is is very is dominated by all this need in our communities and you know housing insecurity and food insecurity and dementia and you know loneliness and um medical issues and and all this you know like counseling and and tax advising and all of this so there's a ton of you know that we're serving multiple populations and multiple needs all at the same time in a shared facility and I think understanding um you know you need to get both of those populations in right it's a it's not an either or so to boil it down in 15 seconds um you ask what are the three things put it in a location where people will see it design it so people will want to go inside and once they're inside reward them with a Place full of life and energy so those that's boiling it down to the three and connection and connection to Nature if possible you don't need a lot of land to be able to do that but we live in New England it's cold outside for a lot of the year and still we can participate in the natural landscape 365 days out of the year in a well welld design building all right what are your guiding principles in terms of design and programming content for the senior center you've worked on what what is your vision of a successful Senior Center that meets the needs of its varied users I would say the biggest the biggest thing is create a place that people want to be and so the one way of doing that you know that we believe in is creating open Airy connection to the outdoors connect places that are not just you know a a a hallway with rooms off of it because the important the important thing is you get people there from maybe program but then the real community building and the real bonding happens outside after right you're talking to this person oh I haven't seen you in a while oh why don't we you know go around you know the corner over to the you know Cafe part and get a coffee let's stay there and then you make a plan to I'll see you next week or whatever it is but it's those moments of connection outside of events that really are for me I think the most important part of creating a any kind of community center because those are the moments where you find a community thank you how do you work together with your team of some contractors do you oversee their work and take responsibility for any mistakes that they make of course wait they don't make mistakes because we find the mistakes before they make them there you go but I mean that's more aimed at at design and construction at at at building buildings and um you know we are public Architects almost all of our work is for municipalities and other other Massachusetts agencies and um we usually a third a full third of our fee sometimes more is actually con is is associated with the construction phase yeah um we spend an enormous amount of time uh both coordinating construction being on site for construction coordinating the documents coordinating our Engineers but coordination of our documents prior to to putting them out to bid uh in the construction drawing process we put an enormous amount of effort into and we just we've been doing this for long enough that we really understand you know where the Baton gets fumbled between the handoff and just cite electrical versus civil engineering or you know everything that goes into ceilings and coordin ating structure and lighting and ducts and sprinklers that all are crisscrossing in the ceilings and so we just spend a lot of time making sure everything fits together and works together and and the people are talking to each other and I don't I don't think anybody ever says oh our structural engineer messed up because their mess up is our mess up I mean pointer pointing fingers doesn't help um if we've signed the contract we're responsible for everything that happens and I would also say that during the construction process I'm I I love the construction process um but it's you work really closely with the contractors it's like and then they'll reach out and ask you a question and you'll problem solve together and it's this really collaborative approach right and it's the same with our our Consultants as well you know our civil or electrical right you you develop these close relationships and then you work through things and you have an open line of communication and it helps it helps to solve problems before they start and then when there's something that comes up people don't view it as a problem it's more of a how are we going to solve this thing that came up not a you have a big problem um and it's I don't know I I really enjoy that collaborative collaboration but I think an important thing to do is bring in subc Consultants early like civil engineers and we went through this a bit on some of the initial studies we did here and what we do other places do you think there's contamination let's bring in our Hazmat consultant early on are there rainwater um you know runoff issues let's bring the civil engineer in early and that's mostly for the benefit of our clients at that point but it benefits the whole whole whole um project to bring them in let them speak up rather than decisions have been made and then help have them dig us out of it if they uh talk about things that we hadn't anticipated so early and often same cost estimating same same thing cost estimators are important part of our team a th000 bucks a square foot yeah but you know we get professional cost estimators um if you're looking at site alternative Southampton we got four different sites conceptually priced we did complete floor plan layouts we got civil engineers involved the town doesn't have um sewer so it's all septic and then did U conceptual um narratives and then we got them priced so that helps avoid problems down the line just just a brief followup if when you're thinking about the construction portion of it what are what are the like attributes that you would look for in a construction company that make you think uh these people are going to be good to work with you know I think that we can have a really successful partnership well it's an interesting question with public construction because kind of by law almost they've got to be the lowest responsible bidder unless it's construction management yeah construction manage you know for example b r we're doing construction manager at risk um which they're tradeoffs chapter 149 149a I again a little bit bit uh um you know specific here um but they could be part of the team I mean reference you know we we do a lot of reference checks and uh the I mean a key question the key question is communication you know uh I think one of the things that you know getting a little bit down this is kind of down in the weeds but we look for um we look for continuity of Staffing on on a during the construction phase of a project um you know things start to fall apart if the superintendent keeps getting replaced every three months that's that makes it really tough to deliver a good project so the core team of the the the uh super superintendent I would probably almost always I'd rather have an a a-level superintendent and a b-level project manager but an a level of each was would be ideal um and this would come out you're saying in the in the reference check phase of the work those are well and also once you get then you know yeah no we ask did was did they keep the same super on the site throughout your whole entire project if it's a bigger project and setting expectations very early like first day like you're you're the contractor here are expectations here's what we expect to see every project meeting here you know we need to see your schedule um you know at certain you know sometimes we work with housing authorities or whatever we say don't be on site before X o00 right and like we just make that just bottom line here's what you have to do there's no room for negotiation um and you know once you do that then it opens the door to I don't know making sure everyone is happier and if we get those into specifications a little hard at the kickoff meeting to come up with all kinds of requirements that weren't into the specifications so so the more we write it into the bid documents the more likely we are to have them perform as anticipated didn't we have grounds for taking action if they violate their contract which is based on the specifications so laying it out early what what what what we want from them and how they're going to serve the client's interests move all right do you want to ask the last one and then we're getting short on time Dave you're up I think how long do you anticipate a project like this would take what well what's the qu I'm not sure what which which what project you talking about the site selection and getting us to how long do you think it would take us to get a conceptual something that we could bring to town meeting or to the town to say here's where we're ready to look for funding for if the sites you anticipate using are not workable this is with the Assumption you have two workable sites right that's my understanding of what you have and that enough due diligence has been done so the Bottom's not likely to fall out we look at both of those we take care we we examine them we make a proposal do a public conduct a public process with you yeah um 6 months something like that that can go pretty pretty quick I mean you have two you have Town me you have a do you have a special town meeting yeah so again if the if you're if you're if you've got clear Running Room to a site and you just want to you know you can push through this Pro I mean the answer isn't a the answer that we often you know give reflect back to you guys which is frustrating for everybody is this depends a lot more on you than it does on us right it depends on the the town's process and what you know how quickly you can move and how you know how much ground you really like you till the garden so that you know you can just plant the seeds and it grows or you know how much communication needs to happen and with some counts we we're we're not in a hurry like we will work at as fast and as slow as you want if you want to like bang this out great but if you feel like you have to like you know kind of slow cook it with your community we're not you know sort of looking at our watch and saying you know we only said we would do this for this some of our fees stretch out over long periods of time it it you know we kind of work at your schedule but as David said if you if the if the land was clear and you know we could work with you to get something in front of of STM in in the fall that'd be a little tight it's bit of a challenge but you know sure why not and the worries if if you know can you do it in three and a/2 months well we could do it three and a/2 months we're not sure you can do it 3 and a half months in terms of the public engagement or whatever the the kind of discussions but or was about 6 months and the their issue was they didn't have a good site and Southampton we picked a site ready to go and they don't have the money yet but both of those every other week we're meeting with the committee we we came to you know Orleans and Southampton a number of times um and they were both about six six months from beginning to end with the public if you if the community process is something you guys you know feel like is is going to be make or break then scheduling over the summer becomes you know something you have to think about really carefully um because a lot of times people you know say wait a minute when did this you know they come back on Labor Day and they're like what like you did this without this is not good you know so there there's some little Logistics around that that you got to get going before you know the end of June and stuff and one of the things we tell our clients is tell us what you want to have done when and we'll work backwards from there and set up a schedule what we do what you do what anybody else has to do to meet that schedule and can we perform can you perform if we don't have time to do our job we'll speak up if our clients don't have time to do their job they should speak up and then maybe you next need to go to the next town meeting um but you know it's about dialogue it's about about laying it out and thinking it through okay wonderful I think that was all of our our initial questions um do you guys have any closing things you'd like to say what are these two sites and maybe you don't want to talk about them I mean just there three sites and you don't have to weed um the attempt since you last left us the attempt has been to determine if the town had land that we could use from site rather than going out to the public and buying land the task I think when you were first around was not that in depth you you they focused on large pieces of property but they may or may not have been town on property yeah so the first task this group did and still working on was try to determine if there was a town own property that we could get into our control that we could save the cost of buying the land um so we have ping down to three sites but we still have little outstanding issues that go on each site yeah um one is closer to town than the others two are actually fairly close to town one is up by the school so there's basically three sites We Believe are large enough but they all have the challenges they'll there'll be traffic there'll be ledge there'll be uh different things here and there but uh possibly well there could be legal administrative issues some legal issues but at the moment our task was to try to determine if we could put it on a piece of town on land first instead of going out and paying you know Millions for a piece of property at this point in time so yeah so we don't do this work cuz we're getting rich off of it we do it because we love doing this work that what you say that $5 an hour I think was that was for one project we'll take that one but we we we would love to keep working with you and Katie it was so nice I so appreciated being invited to meet with they they were all women and that's okay I want to see some guys next next time but um what a great group of people and what great programs and what a lousy building I mean so so we love to work with all of you getting you what you need need and deserve and then this work we do we love doing it thank you you [Applause] do you copy of that I have one printed copy that that'd be great I could take it and scan it for everybody can you email it to me do you want to just email it to me yeah just email to me and then I'll distribute to the group and post it yeah thank you do we need to introduce ourselves or I didn't see I guess it doesn't matter oh they are I guess okay how you oh sorry be still my heart are here bref oh I know had breakfast yet breakfast of That's The Breakfast of Champions chocolate and Pepsi can't beat it and then they started making them with peanut butter on the inside they call there is there okay do you want me to I guess I can why don't you go you're up already no you go you can go you're already standing up v& yeah bargman henryman Henry Orman bargman hry in the references I just wanted to say you'll come across the op M that is um someone hired by the town people money any project that costs over 1.5 million has to have that as a kind of a Lea on so when they say there's a problem that's not somebody that works for the Architects or anything that's a town person who's kind of managing things thank you sir just hand these down great oh you need need more got a lot oh we're all sit here I got one thank you yeah very nice welcome thank you is there a an advancer yeah let me get this ready first screen take the mouse great thank you left click it to move along okay we allowed to close that door yeah let's yeah we can close the door y here everybody [Applause] okay welcome thank you so much for coming and uh if you want to introduce yourself and take a few minutes to um give a a brief presentation and then we have um a pre-selected set of questions that we'd love to ask you afterwards I'd love to do a short presentation because I think it can make the feasibility study come to life a little bit better great so my name is Joel bargman and uh I know I'm supposed to come to these interviews with a team of people to show how excited we are about the project i' like to come because I show how excited we are about the project by having the principal of the firm who's going to manage and run your project I'm the face and the doer of the feasibility studies and when you look at our references um they'll corroborate that I have a switch watch on the cover these Fe ility studies are like Swiss watches you can't have five people working on them you want to control the message that goes out to The Community you want the information for each site to be consistent you want the manage the politics and the different opinions about things and I find that the best way to manage the message and to really get the message across is to um be that point person because this is the most important part of the project getting the money getting it approved town meeting um if I can just have five minutes here the there so I am here alone but we do have a team and this team that's there is geotechnical Engineers hazardous waste material Engineers civil engineers Landscape Architects full gamut of team members that will help us with the site selection for what's right for the city the town of ER and what we've done is we've sort of taken this five sites that you've looked at and I hope I visited them it's a little hard to tell where some of them start and some of them stop but have an idea of what you're up against and the way that we would like to go through that is to look at this this is a site data Matrix that levels the information about each site consistent so that we're sure that we've treated each site the same we're providing the citizens of your town the same amount of information on each site how big it is what the zoning issues are and it's completely consistent across the five sites that you have considered so what we call this is comparative analytical feasibility study we want to compare analytically so that people feel that it's not a biased presentation each site gets its own site plan drawing the purpose of that is that we can see does the building fit does your program fit does the number of parking spaces fit we can also then do a comparative cost estimate that shows what one site costs versus what another site costs so again treat everything equally show them comparative against each other take your parking and traffic some of the sites obviously have some the one on West Main Street might have more traffic issues to deal with so we go through and we do a traffic report for each site we do parking for each site because there may be different levels of overflow parking available depending on where your site is and then we look at when the program is being used so if it's a site say at the school the high school site you have different uses coming and going into that site during the day and so you want to design your parking to accommodate those different time levels during the day and make sure each hour of the day is accommodated as well as not being overdesigned we'll do if it's required geotechnical analysis we sometimes you really have to do that because there's fill on a site we'll do wetland analysis or a number of your sites have Wetlands to them the all of the engineering reports are done um in more or less detail uh as required by each site and then this is a project that just had three sites but you look at them with a series of criteria on the left and we evaluate them you can see two of them have a lot of check marks and one of them doesn't it that one that doesn't have a lot of check marks is clearly deficient in many different ways the hardest thing is to come up with the conclusion though and what we like to do is with a group like this come up with an evaluation Matrix here's 12 criteria that we use to finally evaluate each site and within each criteria there are three levels that you can rank the site against and their criteria what this does is it confirms to the voters that you've looked at this in a level way that each site's been treated levely and that as a group we've adjusted the criteria to be equal and unb biased to each site now it's impossible to be completely unbiased so we have a final category that allows you to voice your opinion about why you think one site might be better than another site and then those points are added in to the more analytical category there's actually 36 different categories we look at they're summarized in those um 13 12 points I just want to close that every dog has a bad habit right or don't let perfect get in the way of good there are no perfect sights the upper left is Needum we spent a year and a half and we ended up in an MBTA parking lot taking half of the commuter rail lot they love it it's a built it's been up for 10 years Falmouth it's a building in the parking lot of the Falmouth Cape cot league baseball team situate in a parking lot in a school adjacent to a bunch of other field programs and then Newton the biggest city we've worked with 880,000 people very tiny tiny site that can only have 15 parking spaces on it so how do we accommodate it everybody's happy to have their sites every is happy to have their building so I I try to reassure people that it's not so cataclysmic you you end up loving the site that you have the way your kids love the college that they went to when they finally got in one and after visiting your sites I drove around town and said well what if there aren't any sites we've had this problem before are there private sites maybe a private site becomes available that may be cheaper than the things you have to accommodate on a public site to go forward so with that I'll open it up to your questions but they're exciting and fun process here I thought your paperwork and your presentation was extremely comprehensive um I I don't know if you felt that you had to rush through it or not but I did I hope you didn't feel like you had to rush through it because you could have almost spent a little more time on each of those particulars because of the comprehensive in my opinion fairly comprehensive not this is not one of the questions on the list I'm sorry um so that is just my opening thought um do you want us to start with the the typical stuff what do we want to talk in general terms of um I think we need to go through the questions first and both back yeah so turn ends up it's my turn for I think it's your turn oh okay okay so the first so we put together a group of questions that we're trying to ask each prospective architectural firm and just to get a general idea so the first question we have is does your firm have a preference for senior center design um with the building on one floor or potentially can the S satisfactory design of a senior center be accomplished with a building on two floors of even three floors but two floors we'll say one to two floor comparison that's um I'll say all of our senior centors except one have been two stories in the last five or six years um it's not a problem going two stories people like them because they're denser there's more activity if you have a two story space that connects the level so people understand where where different programs are that's very helpful but uh we find that the two-story building is very satisfactory and it sort of removes some of the senior assisted living or connotations that go with bigger flat one-story buildings um so we don't get an uh any opposition to the two-story structure it it fits on SES better it allows parking in a little bit more uh comprehensive and and easy Manner and um you know anything you can do to reduce the footprint is helpful from a site perspective because you have to do less clearing of the site we do do one-story buildings if the communities ask Sudbury is a one-story building um but most of our others are two stories Newton happens to be a three-story building what you do is you design it sort of like you might think think of a house the living room and the big spaces are on the ground floor the more private spaces are on the second floor the men's bilard room and the dance room is on the attic level it's a destination so you think about it like a house I'm going to go to that room anyway so I don't mind if it's on the third floor but you need to get your big crowds in and out on the ground floor so there's some thought that goes into it but it's not a problem to go multi-level okay the um do we want anyone want to follow up on that or just we're good good um in term of location of a senior center within a small town and and there as you might be aware is a particularly geographically quite small um do you have a general preference to be closer to the center of town or within a certain number of miles to the center of town in order to make it more visible more usable well what we like to do is have it be on a main street where it's visible from that Main Street but whether it's in the middle of town or a mile and a half outside of town that doesn't is not the main factor for us it's visibility so people see it and they see activity they say well there's a lot of people there to like the library on Saturday was packed you go what the heck's going on in your library there wasn't a parking space in the parking lot that makes you want to go in and see see what the heck's going on so I think visibility is key we the distance that we look at is what's the response time for fire EMT and police should there be an emergency at the center um that sort of is our main criteria we'll find that seniors don't mind driving a mile the citizens in Falmouth did not want to be downtown because of the traffic they have a senior center that's smack in the middle of downtown to turns out not to be so bad um it it it's it can work in either many ways all right thank you actually I thought it would be great downtown because it's a beautiful downtown and if you could find a space to put a two-story Senior Center I think it would bring some activity and economic Vitality to the downtown that you know we're all missing in our downtown so it hasn't been for lack of trying yeah exactly but I love that Main Street I you know can we tell the the Bank building next door would be perfect Senior Center maybe the town hall would yes exactly as a public building uh there are many particular interests seeking to have their ideas imple implemented how do you navigate conflicts between competing interests while maintaining the architectural and design Integrity of the structure and do you have examples of successfully navigating competing interests in other communities just so we have them written up so yeah okay that was question question three right yeah so it's a great question that's my job in this phase is to mitigate the competing interests the the main competing interest is that the trend on senior centers is to make them a little bit more multigenerational or allow them to be used for other purposes so if we put a multi-purpose room in the community in the senior center and it has Audio Visual and TV capability and distance learning because that's how senior centers work these days you can connect different senior you can also use that for Town meetings select bin Conservation Commission you're building some assets you're building a beautiful kitchen it's part of your multi-purpose room can you get more leverage out of those spaces how do you convince people seniors that you might want to let those spaces be used for other purposes when it's not competing with senior purposes so we go through and we sort of discuss that kind of issue and I find that that's really the the biggest controversy in the project the second biggest controversy will be one story or two-story because a lot of people come to the table thinking that it should be a one-story building and then it's an issue of showing how a two-story building can be beneficial um smaller footprint more energy efficient because it has less surface area going through the the different issues that impact why someone might want uh one of the decisions versus another um so you know I think that it's important to hear every side of the equation and not dismiss One side's Vision versus another but then you have to work through those those competing uh competing aspects of the of the vision I and I guess they were they were addressed by um you know what you were talking about in your uh in your presentation that you know your matrices your right the the data Matrix and the the data Matrix tries to put all of the equ all of the factors that you think about on one document and have each one treated equally so you can see where the differences are that helps decide I think which is the better site versus another one but it doesn't always help solve someone's idea of what might be better or not and at the end of the day you're not going to get 100% unanimity we need to get 67% unanimity which is pretty hard but you know there's always going to be some people that don't like a particular conclusion but at the end of the day I think you know falmouth's First Choice was to go in a section of the high school um field and everybody loved that site they couldn't have they couldn't get to an agreement with the school committee and with the security on school properties and and those at the end of the day when the project got built they're happy as can be so I think you know people have to have a little bit of faith that the goal is to get the building done not to win the battle on which site the building goes to you know um when choosing a site for a senior center what do you see as the three the top three most important considerations that will encourage use of the building um things like in terms of size location topography ease of access so we like to have the topography be so that you can get from the your car to the building and less than 2% slope on the parking lot that's perfectly accessible for anybody even really easy on a wheelchair we try to get 50% of the parking within 125 ft of the front door not everybody has a handicap sticker on their car and not everybody that's going to come to the senior center that may need assistance getting in is going to be in a wheelchair or using a walker they may have canes they may have other disabilities or they may just not want to have a handicap sticker on their car for various reasons so it's important to get those spaces near the front door so people can get in not everybody needs that requirement so we try to meet 50% of that to really make it accessible we like to have outdoor activities at the it's as important to have outdoor space as indoor space in many people's opinions can you have a little walking trail a quarter mile loop around the building can you have a botch cord can you have a community garden if you have pickle ball tremendously popular you might want to have a parking lot that situates some of your cars next to the outdoor activities so again people can come and and use those so what's the answer to your question parking level and then getting in and out of the site left turns are particularly problematic so one reason I emphasize the traffic and parking [Music] [Music] um I'll sit out on asking just to avoid any communication gaps but I'm certainly listening and taking notes thank you though okay thanks okay uh the next question from the committee what are your guiding principles in terms of design and program content for the senior centers you've worked on what is your vision of a successful Senior Center that meets the needs of its varied users that's probably going to be a controversial answer the last four senior centers that we've done are centers for active living and they include a gym no one thought about doing gyms in senior centers 10 years ago now everybody wants a gym and everybody loves a walking Track where the seniors can walk in the wintertime and not be in the ice and snow and they can play pickle ball and in sandwich we have a separate entry to the gym so that it after 3 when seniors are done the recreation groups can come in and use the gym without being in the senior center and all so yeah it adds money to the project but it makes it a building for everybody not just for seniors and the senior demographic I was shocked in Falmouth the finishes they came up with were very mod they the program they had was a 1500 ft exercise with really highend equipment and we asked them you know how are you making these decisions and they said the senior center is not for us we want it to be around for the next 50 years we're trying to think about the people in the future and not have this field dated and not not used going down down the uh the timeline so I think that's sort of the the thing that we need to think about is what makes it exciting I think the kitchen makes it exciting the kitchen is the heart and soul of a home and it's a heart and soul of a senior center and you can make that kitchen that has to have all these commercial aspects to it ventilation and fire suppression into a program space teaching how to make a meal for husbands that are widowed or cooking classes for uh different groups in Nim they bring in high school kids and have activities in the kitchen in fouth they have a kitchen that serves and and and over meals and sandwiches and it's a little Revenue generator for for the senior center the kitchen's really exciting and what I love is um you used to put the kitchen well we still put the kitchen off of the multi-purpose room but we don't dedicate half the multi-purpose room for the food all the time because now your biggest room is got tables in it and you can't have Zumba or you can't have a movie or you can't do this what the trend is is to make a little cafe you can still have meals in the cafe but it doesn't dominate your multi-purpose program space and you really begin to get much more use out of that particular space so probably lose a job telling you gym but the dining area we move to a cafe type space and that Cafe type space now becomes a social space and the social Space is really important um no one wants to say we're building a senior center so that seniors can go have a place to talk but it's a hugely important factor of a senior center if the three things they say to help with dementia and age is soal socialization diet and exercise those are the things that a senior center can provide in addition to lifelong learning and educational Outreach and and other things I don't quite understand what you mean by you know a cafe Center or whatever Starbucks cafe you go into Starbucks and there's a little cafe off to the side where you can sit a table and and it it's not a real doesn't feel like a a um uh dining room it doesn't feel institutional it's much more oneon-one socialized and it doesn't use up your multi-purpose room which is how dining has typically been done congregate dining and daily dining breakfasts or lunches typically take up a half or a third of your multi-purpose room and so we've been taking that out of the multi-purpose room then how do you accommodate the number of people that you well when you have a big event like Valentine's Day or Thanksgiving or once a month you do go into the multi-purpose room and you can set that room up for 100 130 however many people you need but dayto day you don't need dining for that many people and you can do it in a different um in different ways and this is a great example of some people may not agree with every idea I can see you have questions about what I suggest I'm just trying to fit our our current program into that model I know you know and one way to do it is to go visit some senior centers that have that model and let you see that I actually a couple years ago when we interviewed for the previous version of this I got to see your senior center the kitchen was a big part of that that program so that's that's why I was bringing that up again Gotta Love folding tables and Storage how do you work to how do you work together with your team of subcontractors do you oversee their work and take responsibility for any mistakes they make yes we oversee their work and we're responsible for their work so you have a large number of subconscious that you work with for the feasibility study as well as it depends on the particular site if if the site needs environmental because there were hazardous materials at one point maybe there was oil dumped on the site and we need to study that we would bring that consultant in if we're in a deeply wooded site that hasn't been cleared for years it will have what's called Forest mat for the first layers of the soil we may need to bring a geotechnical engineer in to understand how deep that Forest mat is so that we can put in the budget enough money to remove that and not have it be a surprise after town meetings voted on the project go whoops we didn't know that we were encountering this issue so there's specialized Consultants that come in as are needed the traffic and parking consultant is always there on every site the civil engineer to identify what site utilities are there and and if they're not there how long of a distance do we need to bring I know one of your sites doesn't have water how how many feet do we have to run the water line down to get to that or if we're going to put a private well on for drinking water how do we do that it needs a 200t radius around it and other issues so they're particular factors in each project in each site that may come into play that require consultants and we'll bring those on as needed but like I said civil landscape architecture and traffic are the basic ones that are on every project I'll try to get it back but Zoom isn't the remember it's yeah requir yep all right how long would you anticipate a project like this to take sort of an open but we like to do them in six months I know you allocated 12 months for your timeline um it's a lot of energy for a committee to devote to a project I'm really amazed at how much time people spend on on these so if we can get started and we break the project into sort of two steps one is eliminate certain sites that we don't think are going to make sense through that evaluation criteria and then once you do that focus on one or two sites that make more sense and do a deeper dive into those and that's the second half of it so if you looked at it three as a six-month process it's two or 3 months in the beginning to get through the initial analysis and then to do the final analysis is another 3 months um I I you know a a 12-month process May well be the case but we don't want to get all of our information together and then dump it on the town right before town meeting the idea is to get it together in the first 6 months and then let people digest it yep for the next 6 months and understand it and then ask questions and then oh yeah that's a good point maybe we can refine that idea and and help mold the project to one that voters will vote for excellent thank you all right wonderful that was I think all the questions the formal questions did anyone have follow-up questions they wanted to ask for question all right a two I have some slides too if anybody wants to see them so fast I'll concentrate later on them no I have additional ones that I was going to use for questions but um I was going to get in a little bit to his estimate if you don't mind and the original allowances and so forth so I saw that in your um attachment a of the information that you sent us that you had included you know let's say an estimate for youru Fe and plus the estimates of the other professionals that were going to be potentially involved um and I'm taking it to believe that if that depending on the site that we would may or may not need you know control Point let's say I'm just making a guess that's correct okay so at this point in time depending on the the extent of the site uh data analysis or whatever the correct term was you're going to bring it we're going to be allowed under a budget let's say to bring in these types of engineers and geotechnic people and whatever to to take a look at the site I think that's an advantage I've been you know talking about that myself is you know how important it is to do the engineering and whatnot so my getting to the question at the end is that you have an estimated cost of your fee as well so do you feel comfortable that your fee would stay roughly in that bre it includ and then yeah well so you've got BH and a in here at Fe yeah then then you have Consultants yeah no I understand what I the reason I did it that way was to a show you how it was broken out but B the way I read to RFP is that you may want to call on us lots of times we do the fusibility study I I got the impression that you wanted to call on us for specific tasks and maybe technical assistance and then you could take that on or if you don't need control point we could we may need more environmental this is right what is the cap and we have to move the fees around according to what we found at those five sites okay so it may only be three sites now but that's okay so that was one we looking at you clearly did a nice job of looking online and finding some of our old documents and some of the stuff we had done before and saw the list of the sites that's what you looked at plus you over on the tunnel and obviously looked at some of the things which I thought was good um so what I'm getting it is we're better off in your eyes I guess to look at the total estimate then we had to look at the individual pieces of the estimate that's correct that's what I thought cuz in the event that one doubled inside the the list and another one was half and would potentially end up with the same total yeah okay thank you that's the that's the paperwork he submitt right yes just to let everyone know okay any any other questions any other closing things you'd like to say do I have a few minutes oh yeah can I borrow the mouse and sure the um I wanted to get to talk about the cost it's really important to somehow understand what the voter's tolerance is and that that's sometimes we go into a project and they say give us everything this is our wish list this is the one time we have to build the building and then all of a sudden your Project's you know $25 million and the voters don't want to get to that number so you know what what you can absorb as a community is important to understand I don't have a silver bullet for doing that but we try to approach that by addressing the numbers and being really rigorous about the cost estim so that's the how we do the cost we do two estimates and then we reconcile them and this just shows the accuracy of the cost estimate to the actual project which is really important that our projects when they're built are built for the amount of money that you went to town meeting for but what it's not just a construction cost you have to buy furniture you have to buy audio visual you have soft costs and hard cost so it's really imperative that we put together a good total project cost that covers all of your your move costs everything that's involved and sometimes voters will say okay well what's it going to cost cost me I know how much it's going to cost me to build if it wasn't going to cost me year to year we have a consultant that can work with us that um we identify what your additional staff is so when Community senior centers add this big kitchen they often don't have a chef they have to add a chef to their payroll maybe half time but what's the impact of that on the budget what's the impact on Commodities you have a bigger you have a very small Senior Center all of a sudden you're going to have 12 or 14,000 foot to maintain let's understand what those are and so that the voters understand that you're aware of the impact that this building is going to have on um the bigger picture and another way to offset that is through sustainability the the beauty of the new building codes is that we can reduce the energy demand maximize your efficiency and and make that Bild building less expensive to operate to help mitigate some of those additional costs that you may have for additional staff so the Energy Efficiency and the sustainability this just shows for Newton we took the existing Senior Center their Energy Efficiency of 108 you don't have to know what that means brought the new building down to 29 so it's basically a 20 a 75% reduction in energy energ costs even though it's three times the size of building well on a per square foot basis yeah and then this sort of hearkens back to your earlier question of how do you mitigate different opinions at the end of Designing Randolph they said you know we'd really love to have a greenhouse and we've been working on the project for 6 months but instead of saying no our one of our Architects found this prefab Greenhouse in California that could just be attached to our building $50,000 unheated space I actually think it's a little Revenue Center I don't know what they're growing on the side there but I think it's high Revenue but it's it's that point of you know being flexible and being accommodative and when you said what are the some of the exciting programs I couldn't really explain it but the upper left is a new arts and crafts room it's a digital arts and crafts room as opposed to the oldfashioned arts and crafts room so it's got 3D printers it has all sorts of modern technology next to it the quilting room but this is that idea of Designing for the Next Generation the upper right image is that Cafe at Falmouth where people can take their lunches and has TV go outside of the outdoors in that lower left is the them kitchen with a training training teaching island in the middle of it um just a few images I wanted to get to to help explain those topics that we had the last point I'll make is it's not necessarily bad to do something purpose-built the pool room on the upper right is the men's cave it's a little bit different than the one on the upper left which is a flexible room but you know maybe there's a reason to have something very special to help attract different demographics and different users to the building those are the kind of things that we want to discuss with you purpose-built flexible you know how how do we go about designing and accommodating your citizens where's the bar I didn't see a [Applause] bar nice little Kegerator under the counter got to have one in the kitchen everybody knows the cooks like to drink there that walking Track everybody all right so I'm appreciate the opportunity to show those slides yeah appreciate your time you all done thank you so got drive up there yeah that up do we yeah [Applause] all right well thank you I'd love to Jo app great town nice to meet you so much nice to meet you thanks so much thank you sir bye bye I know it's a hard decision because I know John's next no Tage of good Architects sure you trip him on the way when he's on his way inations thank you thank you I'm stuck on [Music] L let me straightening out something here The Av system is getting straightened up here man grab him man yes that be great on down the next contestant how's that sound he was going to try to Tri you so you wouldn't make it welcome have a seat here at the end of the table sure you know other Joel is complaining I don't I just I was complaining came try not to make his bruises visible I rolled up newspaper a little bit of water goes the Long Way um I did bring a somebody somebody said you had a um somebody like something this thing up there that I could put a little we very brief little show and tell pretty pictures give yeah give the give the stuff the professional looking one and I wave my hand and it changes can you run either PowerPoint or a PDF it's either one okay if you can do PowerPoint it's a little bit yeah it's probably better my my other hand do is is it Cas yeah know there one I looking for that I didn't put anything secret up there I see that far you find us up there again this is why I love technology it seems to like it seem to like it that time let's do the STM water one bh+ A's there um where do we show up what's going on here I can't see does that have HDMI on it I just plug my computer into yeah it does it does yeah could do that we just do that we don't want to hold you up too long I can the side here if he wants to put it here F I just ran that on my computer so I know it was working with interesting how I did that yeah hold on a minute I think there is one I there got to be one I mean there has to be one it's just a matter of where yeah there's some stuff here see I don't see on this side I don't see it it's USB over there probably right us still here got that come in if it's there it's it's not SE it's not sealable this again well it's part of the F sounds it does recognize well you know what he did Joel probably put a little bug in there seriously yeah there find it no no this be is it you should be for the yeah well maybe it's it was coming up right below seed dve before there's nothing else to scroll down this PC um is there another USB is there another USB port this goes into this okay up here's the HDMI oh yeah that's s right one last try if it doesn't work I'll fake it going take a look think you can put it in here yeah put it right here oh yeah look at that in oh that I just that's what goes over to there oh got oh that's good work the heck sh plug other Now is it going to pop up on here or not well let's see what happens you know I'm just going to you see picture my dog get us going on this right it sounds like it likes it but it do you want to stretch to hear yeah I will I Have Eyes in my head so I can see what I'm doing let's see what happens does that show up you need to unplug the um I know now I'm not cuz that's sending the signal out and we're trying to go in oh it's going the other way yeah it was heading that's not an input yeah it's an output but generally you should see that USB drive yeah I don't see a USB all ends over where does this one plug into it's up top there yeah oh yeah yeah well these are all ends over here you do this but that's HDMI that's those sorry my bad I thought that one wasn't you want to try a different USB it's got to work us spe support see if I remember yeah some might not take data transfer said try something different he gets the race I don't know how that happened he gets the day off I'm always complaining about you you'll have to I'll let you put this back together again exactly all right are you thank you all right this is going to be quicker than usual if you notice we put our names on our outfit ourselves I'm John Barbara I have to look at the names Jamie and Dan and uh we'll get into all the excitement so leave it on the ground you back with a mouse go yeah like if you click it's going to go oh okay scroll so I got it so here we go sit yeah thank you um this is our team and who you see here is all but Kelly this is our entire office when you call us you'll get us I stay involved in all the projects Dan and I and J Jamie and Barbie Barbie is our technical person with the with the software stuff Dan is a project manager with me and Jamie is our office manager she keeps me honest and Kelly's not here Kelly is one of our members five years in the firm and she is a quad plgic a little hard to get around so all right so I'm going to quickly go through the most recent projects this is just recently finished in North Andover it's about a 14,000 squ Foot Center um and I'm just going to show you some of the images if there's anything that you see that you want to talk about later certainly you can ask us about it but this is some of the Interiors Long metal is another one that's just recently finished this one was done with a gymnasium but it's still it's a 17,000 foot senior center with a 11,000 ft gem on it so if you take the gem off that's the senior center and it's in a park um and that's and a lot of these you'll see we're going to leave behind with you one of my U uh lectures that I do from Mass console on aging and it goes through the details of how you design these buildings and this is a cafe it's right at the entrance and um I don't which do I push it this way no this way I'm learning multi-purpose room which has a performance stage in it um this room right now is lit all with natural light we have skylights up in the ceiling a lot of lighting we have Shades that can darken it and at night we have the hanging pendant and you can see up above a lot of the transparency that we have that connects all the different spaces together so you visually see how they're all operating from wherever we are in the building in this case this was a walking Track and gymnasium which has volleyball pickleball and uh what's the other basketball and outside there's four other pickleball courts um full fitness facility Game Room Lounge Library um down in the lower right side is a teaching kitchen and what we do there is that we bring in outside when I say we it's a royal weed um we bring in outside chefs from local restaurants and they talk about their menu and how you cook it and it's mostly helping people learn how to cook for smaller two people or less there's a there's the library so there's noisy areas and quiet areas this is the latest one it just had a soft opening on the 18th of March this is wilam It's a 15,000 600t Senior Center uh just now opening but not quite 100% we're going through the punch list right now and that's the before that's the rendering done by Yours Truly Barbie and um this is it built wow we changed the color and you can see here there's a trellist area when it's up and running in the summer that's an outside Cafe that connects to the cafe inside and there's a drop off area there and and go a little bit farther here you can see the fitness room the multi-purpose room you see a lot of transparency with different spaces looking down into these different so you see how everybody's working the one on the lower left is that's a quilting class that's a double-sized classroom with a divider wall that allows you to be broken down into two parts and then over on the right is a Bachi ball court and by the way that's a golf course in the background which is really nice good for walking um the game room Billiards um the cafe which connects outside to that trellis area the arrival point where we have um digital screens to help tell you what's going on in the building the library Lounge which is double-sided with a fireplace very popular spot and that is it I wanted to be quick because I want to leave it to you guys to ask us what else we do wrong or right and I'm going to leave up our names and who we are and I did bring with me oh there it is Jamie grab or Dan this is the presentation I just did I'm going to leave it with you and these are two example studies which I have to take back we only have one of each and this can stay with you that's the that's a typical lecture program that I do at mcoa you have it I I actually have that oh you have that oh what's up I attended your lecture at the last MCA meeting oh good I'm glad somebody went to it yes it was a packed house yeah I think we have about 40 or 50 people that come every year we call it swle it's plenty of money there okay all right so we have a um we have seven predetermined questions for you guys and then um you know conversation can flow from there where were we asking first question is it did you ask I asked the last we were over to Dave okay all right so Dave does your firm have any preferences for a senior center design with the entire building on one floor or can a satisfactory design of a senior center be accomplished with a building on two floors well it depends upon the size okay um if you're less than 10,000 square ft generally a single story building works pretty well but almost all of our projects are in excess of of uh 10,000 ft we highly recommend two stories you'll be familiar if you're familiar with llo they built a 20,000 ft Center on one one level it's really worth visiting to understand the difference between that and if you go to let's say wilam or or long medal the one thing about two stories is that the first time I said this to a group they looked at me like you know this is for elders old people we're not all old and one of the most important things about uh the national Cil aging recommends that we walk seven to 10 flights of stairs a day to stay flexible keep your ankles moving your knees working and if you can't walk the stairs right next to it you I had in one of the pictures up there is an elevator because obviously an elevator is required for Ada accessibility and it's a one one stop elevator and the other thing i' like to also say about a two-story building is that actually it's less expensive if you're over 10,000 ft² to build two stories and a lot of people say well gee you got an elevator you have you have stairs but what you don't have is it if it's if you look at lllo lllo is 20,000 ft foundation's 20,000 ft the slab is 20,000 ft the roof is 20,000 ft the number one heat loss in the building is the roof so if you got a 20,000 ft² roof versus an 8,000 ft² or a 6,000 ft your actual heat loss is less and the the most expensive thing about your building when you're all done the hardest part is getting the money to build it but the real hard part is operating it so it's twice as expensive to operate a poorly designed building over a 40 or 50e span than it is to build it so it's much more expensive to operate down the road and you're a greatest expense no matter how well the building is built is Operation and to give you an idea long mle North Andover and wilam our ceilings are r60 which is the rating for for heat loss our walls are R40 all the lighting inside is LED and we use vrf for the HVAC system the higher the installation the more we spend on it but the smaller your mechanical systems are and the less expensive it is to run it so I hope that wasn't too long we recommend two stories if if if it's the right side under 10,000 square ft the economics great thanks next one okay can you give us an idea of your opinion on the importance of the location of a senior center within a small town like air in other words we're asking is there a general preference to be closer to the center of town or within a number of miles of the center of town or is it is it a factor in your mind well we all have worked on different towns with different sighting abilities and one of the issues here is that obviously the familiar location is really important but what happens what what ultimately decides are those the questions what happens is that it give you an idea in ducksbury we had we had I think 16 or 17 sites wow and we went all over the place looking look at everything some were easily to dismiss others were a lot better and um and the last day of going around looking at SES we were driving by the fire station on Route 3A and I said wow right across in fire station there's this big open area with some trees on it what's that oh that's owned by the cemetery really well in the end because of the way people are being buried these days the cemetery had all this extra land and they weren't going to be using it because of creation so and and by the way the cemetery was not right in front of you it was off we ended up building our building on that site 7 Acres and um it was really interesting and Wilbraham we look for six years at different sites everything from playing fields which are really difficult to take as you probably have learned here and um and so we ended up they discovered uh the building inspector says you know right behind Town Hall adjacent to the golf course we have this big empty piece of land and by the way it's right near Wetland so it complicated it a bit so we said wow you know that's Town Hall everybody knows where town hall is and here we could build this building there so we started on that only discovered to the chag of the Town Administrator that that um they had leased this empty parcel to the golf course and the golf course was being run as a as a private club that you join but on least Town land and it sounds a little bit like your pironi Park issue um it was touch and go there because they're concerned about hitting seniors with golf balls CU I guess they're not real good players there we had Consultants come in and talk about 60t high fences and all this stuff in the end it got built it got approved by the board of the Town adjusted the uh property and we built this which you saw up there senior center right along the golf course which is a wonderful opportunity because one of the key things about growing older is exercise and the golf course is available for walking and um we have been so far nobody's been prosecuted for trespassing but but it's great in offseason too hopefully that gave you an idea that the sites are really challenging and we have you'll see in that book there that I handed out you'll see there's a we have a matrix in there of how you select a site it's both subjective and objective we we look at sites and I think there example there might be 10 sites on a particular town and we rate we look at hydrology topography who owns the site um zoning issues is it is it on Town sewer or is it septic what kind of water source do you have to get a public water supply or do you have water we go through that whole Matrix and everybody on the committee and stakeholders in town if necessary will apply will apply a value to to each one of those issues that that's listed I think there's like 12 or 14 of them and we go across those sites and then we add it up down the bottom and it very quickly tells you what really is the positive sits out of that and I think in that in our study there in that book it says um we came up with um three sites out of like 10 or 12 and then um it helps make it's a tough time to make a decision size of the site a geographic location I think you mentioned is it is it easy to be found we did a project in um in a town where they had a beautiful is that the Matrix yeah there's the M it's pretty expensive uh what what happens we found a beautiful site they it was donated it was a former hunting lodge gorgeous but it was right on the Wellsley line and there there's a certain animosity between Welsley and this other community they they didn't get along well they didn't like the idea that they'd be so close to Welsley that Welsley might be using their senior Cent that site was perfect it was beautiful but it did not get selected it ended up more in the center of town for good reason but those are the kinds of things you run in there's political issues and there's physical issues of the site that makes the difference a big yeah well Welsley is a good example we we were not we interviewed for Welsley for the fusibility study we did not get it it went to a competitor of mine who I know quite well and it was right on Route 16 and it was on a a very small site and when we interviewed we said this site is too small you have to acquire an adjacent there's an adjacent um apartment building small and the architect that was selected did not push that issue and they ended up with parking across the street over by the fire station well the street happens to be Route 16 have you ever been on Route 16 you don't cross that street much less have Elders having to cross the street and the design because it was so small the design had the building right here and you you had to drive in behind the building behind the building because of where the door was dropped somebody off and then have to go back on the 16 to go back onto the site the park and so it fell apart during town meeting they came back out we had a chance to reinw and we gave him a full design which I think is in that book and um we won the project and I reminded the committee that five years before we had interviewed with the same design and they said oh we missed that you know well that happens but um but that site was very challenging that's a 13 12,800 ft building two stories we by the way the footprint the size of the site really makes a difference it's a site's type two stories is really important and we squeezed that down and we ended up with 35 parking spaces for 12,000 ft the building and circulation on site too yeah and we circulate on site we don't have to leave but that's if I had my way we needed 50 parking spaces but we bought the lot next door and swle we call it $1.2 million to buy this little 20,000 foot but made all the difference in the world it completely made the project work so sighting is really challenging and fun believe it or not it is we know a little yeah um so um as a public building and you're obviously familiar with there are going to be many particular interests seeking to have their ideas implemented how do you navigate conflicts between competing interests while maintaining the architectural and design Integrity of the structure oh my gosh yeah we we we're well familiar with that um to give you an idea well uh wam which is just opening I hope you get a chance whether you pick us or not please go by and see it uh Paula is the director there um that's a two-story building because the site's tight we have about a how many par we up about 100 999 99 and it's about 15,000 ft and then we have overflow to the um for special events to the town hall parking spaces which we're not counting that building there's a big push and I noticed there's always a concern whether you doing a woodframe building or a steel building and my contractors if if they have a choice they're going to pick a large building when I say large 14 15,000 square F feet they're going to pick steel steel is not necessarily cheaper but the labor they can erect that building in 10 days M if you're building in Wood it's going to be 3 weeks maybe longer and if you're paying your your union your your wage rates I think the Carpenters now 100 bucks an hour so and and by the way steel is not a file sub bid what carpentry is so those are issues that come to play so when we go to work with the budgeting that's really a trick and there was a real push by the OPM on that project to do it in wood and in the end it was steel and um two things that come out of that I don't we built lots of lots of build Belmont was built in Wood um it really a lot of it has to do with where the economy is and and what's for a while there steel tripled but then a 2x4 went from a buck 80 to six bucks so you R you ran into a lot of this maneuvering around and how you work out your budget in the end that building is steel if tornado went by the building isn't going to go anywhere but what's really important you seen that but what's really important is that when activities are going on in the building you have no idea that there's an aerobics class on the second floor because we have concrete decks and um a lot of acoustical control that we can get in a steel building and we can't get the W building so they're both have their positive but there we had a struggle and in the end when it was steel we've got nothing but compliments out of it um the other issues are uh really the biggest job every town has is selling this to the town and we highly recommend that you have stakeholder meetings neighborhood meetings uh the quicker you can show people what you're doing the faster they can they can argue against it or put their put in but once you get people putting in their input they become ownership of the of the pro project and part of our whole deal is explaining to people why a lot of people don't understand why two stories is really good for seniors versus one story or whether a cafe which connects to the front door and goes outside is a great drop off point for people to come in and sit down and have a cup of coffee Cofe with a friend before they go in and do a program or they just come by to meet with their buddies and then leave afterwards it's it's there's three key things for Designing these these these particular centers socialization nutrition and exercise and if we do all three of those in our community we end up with a much healthier population over 60 I still play Squash twice a week for an old guy you know and when we visit the centers we see a lot of people preferring the stairs yeah in fact we did a study in Holo which is a 20,000 ft Center we did a study there and 87% of everybody who used that building use the stairs and part of that is that our stairs 6in risers not the legal one is 7 and a quarter that's too much eight in Massachusetts yeah 6 in you like 6 in so we do 6 in risers we also put an edge on the risers so we have both a a luminent edge and a abrasive black Edge so when I'm walking down the stairs if I have macular degeneration or any kind of vision issues I can see the edge of the stair there's a brand new Senor Center I won't say where it is because some of the competition is responsible for it the stairs are all Oak they're all the same color all the way down I can't see the edge at my house I'm I'm a I'm on a three level house I'm up and down the stairs my last Riser and every single stair it's got a luminescent edge on it so when I go down at night I don't miss the last step which before that I did grabbing a new Post in the dark is difficult but but when you design these things and you'll see it in the big book there's a lot of very important issues and stairs is one of them so I don't know whether that really answered if you want to come back to that question well I was I excited you went the my sen years they start kicking me under the table you went to the next question already you to oh I did what was that that's fine no try me out to three most important considerations when you encourage the building never conflicts between competing interests like on we didam yeah well and even North End over second floor wanted to redesign yeah kind of just have to guide work our way through the education a good example is double doors never do double doors for the seniors and I learned this recently with our qua pgic uh Kelly and I've always been a single door guy and I'll tell you why double do is a three- fot Beach all right and if you go to a a center I don't care whose building it is um one door is almost always locked because you know it's not supposed to be that's a fire hazard well if you you meet if you meet if you meet the right width so even if they don't lock it if you have a power opener if both doors open and the next Double Do open and we're in New England and we're in the middle of a snowstorm right you got a blizzard inside the building so what what I really discovered is that ADA says 36 doors which are 32 in clear that's not what enough for the new wheelchair my quad Colgate lady Kelly can she can't get through an ADA Compliant door with her hands on the side of her her wheelchair has batteries on it it's it's and and the other issue too is that quite honestly 32 in is not acceptable for for the wheelchair and and also for um Walkers Walkers thank you that's um so we we recommend a 3' 6 door and a lot of people what you know but it really when you see them in operation you'll see it in our last three centers they're all 36 in fact the project we finished in um lexon Kentucky which is a 45,000 ft Center all the doors throughout the center are 3 fo6 just to make it and by the way it's not hard to open them because the new ADA requirements they can't have more than I think 4 lbs of price pressure so all the closers work with that and the bathrooms now have use infrared you can swing your hand by and open the door for you I think it something happens here I walked up the door was open I'm surprised yeah in fact only four years ago there were push buttons and let me tell you about a quad a quad can't has a hard time pushing those buttons but she can wave her hand and that door opens so lot of conflicting interests is through miseducation so we educate them with the reasons we're choosing what we're choosing why we're choosing the doors why we're doing this with the stairs just educating and sometimes people win a lot of ones they went on are colors not a big deal to be honest with you to be right up front about it in lllo I I know jod quite well the director there she's a lovely lady we're big fans we worked a lot with her we did not get that job because they want to do a 20,000 ft² single Square building and if you look down that hallway that hallway is over 30 ft I think we measured it 130 ft long if my mother arrived at that hallway and there's an event at the end of that hallway and she has her walker not going to go to that our centers when you go to see them they're almost all very open plan when you go in the M the everything is right there and the rooms that have to be closed like classrooms are has a lot of glass so you see a lot of transparency and what's really great about that because a lot of the new fer seaters a little shy they don't feel comfortable but when you see a friend in a quilting class or a painting class I might try that you know so the transparency is really important and especially on very large centers because at the end of the day you want to make sure everybody's out and you can see that very quickly in the room got a lot of glass tell you the maintenance going you have to wash all that freaking glass we not no fingerprints are allowed it's finger prooof proof keep the kids out yeah we let kids in they're they're nice yeah go ahead I'm sorry you ready for a next question can't wait kind of all combining together um when you see a site for a senior center what do you see as the top three most important considerations think we did that I you're number five sorry he morphed into that one I'm sorry I apologize I'll be answer give the question well the question well whatever the question is a little bit different than what you know what never mind we're unconventional I apologize um what are your guiding principles in terms of design and program content for the senior centers you've worked on and what is your vision for a successful Senior Center that meets the needs of its varied varied users our first Senior Center we designed was in 1987 in winr Massachusetts and um since then we've designed or have done studies for about 60 to 60 5 centers of which maybe 30 35 of them have been built um in the town of Belmont which was now 15 years ago we came up with a New Concept if you will if you go look at a lot of senior centers um they have hallways everything's behind a door if you go to I know they're not interviewing so I can bring this up in chapi they have a a room for puzzles you go in a room out the door go in sit down work on a puzzle we figured out that about a third to 40% of the Senor center is open can be open concept so when you come into like hok you come into what we call the high energy space which is the reception area they have my senior center consoles up and and some of the bigger centers will have multiple on ones people come in they're all meeting maybe there's a big event maybe it's going to be at lunch or or or special aish class there's a lot of chatting going on we we figured out that you could move out of that space to a little bit quieter space what we call a conversation space where you you can sit down by the fireplace and some comfortable chairs and by the way you can talk about seating too it's deal um you can sit down and um and carry on a conversation but you're not writing all that activity of people standing around and then just beyond that we create and you'll see in our last five or six centers we have a a kind of a an open separation fireplace higher bookcases um on the other side of that is a is what we call the quiet space there if you go to Holio there'll be um there's a morning netting group that sits in there and they chat and net inside the fireplace or there's some folks sitting around playing back gon or Checkers or um or cribbage and they're having quiet conversation so we we have a Zone noisy not too noisy and quiet all open you can you can look all the way from the lobby all the way to the library but they're separated out and we have special acoustical systems if you walk in our centers we have a lot of coffed ceilings and in those ceilings we have what we call high high in NRC ceiling tiles it's noise reduction coefficient we use only .95 ceiling tiles in this room you have they're probably 6 or less it's not enough we're fuzzy in here so we absorb lot but often you go like this and there's a lot of reverberation the real issue for us Elders as we grow older is that we cannot hear well with high frequency background noise so we want to reduce that noise way down so we do that through the open space planning where we separate out spaces where people who need more quiet and be in those and then what goes what happens there is that if you walk in the hoo you see a large Monumental stair going to the next floor it welcomes people to the next floor and what we do at the next floor floor is we our big mistake years ago in ducksbury is that we put all the classrooms on the second floor they were quiet and dark and not many things happened what we discovered in by the time we did BMA and um Holo is that we put the game room up there we put the computer space Fitness up there uh we actually have a band room in in in Holo they 5050 guys up there ladies playing it it takes people up so the energy of the building now becomes not horizontal but vertical and um so open plan is the thing we discovered in our process of working with directors that the open plan really changed the way these buildings are perceived and and used and um so when you go and see these and I highly recommend certainly before you if you can do this before you make a decision go look at a couple of these STS you know not just ours I mean we think ours are terrific but there are there are some good examples of what you should not do and what you can do and um that's part of that process I W toiz well a feeling of success that comes from that is we see the rate of attendance going up significantly after these new centers are built not only just because of the space we find that parking is never adequate and and in ducksbury we had one select person in favor nobody on the finance committee in at town meeting we had Elders standing up saying why do we need this it's just for poor people just for poor that's so w BS somebody said that oh yeah oh I can tell you some worse greedy old geers they refer to us sometimes but um it's just for poor people because we all go to Florida well let me tell you a secret my mother's very well off she grew up in community that didn't have a senior center and she sat in her Library every day and read book biography she was a l reading bi but she didn't physically get out and move and by 8081 she couldn't even do the stairs down into her garage because she was not doing movement and these centers I can go on and on that's a 4-Hour lecture of that book so but these centers are about making our communities more aware of how important it is for our elders to age properly both physically through exercise socially through engagement and nutritionally through food all our centers serve food allow them teach how to cook the classes in in long mle are packed they just very successful so I'm I've gone up for shut up just hit me so how do you work together with your team of subcontractors do you oversee their work and take responsibility for any mistakes that they make you better believe it I we give you an idea of my cost since the May I've been working with him for 45 years um I worked with his boss he then took over the company Fogerty I don't know where you know foger if you do much Municipal work he does everybody um Jim Dillis at dzi is our civil engineer we've done he did Welsley we did he didn't do Walpole because that was a Brownfield site that was a WR gray site so somebody spent 25 million bucks cleaning before we H the senior center on it but um and we used a local guy was doing that but he's he's done um uh just finished wilam this is a complicated site because of wetlands so we work very close are Structural Engineers oh sorry yeah that's right you figed that out for this is our list all these people uh VAV our MEP fire protection we've been working for with them for 25 30 years they've all been in the field for decades yeah and they've done our centers over and over again and every once in a while we have to whack them in the head when they get something wrong but um we have a beam in the wrong place and we but nobody would ever know it it's not you got's got it right well how what's the matter they couldn't read the plans how did they put it in the wrong place what what's really great about our team is that this group has been working with us on the last 10 15 some going back maybe every everything we've done and working with elders and by the way you should understand you go to our website we I not looked at it at all but I understand there's a lot of senior centers on it that's what we do we design for elders and we design for the youngest elders and the most senior older Elders when you walk when you go to we don't use ceramic tile on our floors anywhere for two reasons one we know statistically when an elder falls it hurts you have a 30% greater chance of breaking something and the number one cause of accidental death amongst Elders is falling so we don't want to have we want when you fall on carpet believe it or not or even lolium it's less dangerous for an elderly person than it is on suram tile and the other problem with ceramic tile is it's never perfect so when you go to let's say long metal you'll see a pattern because part of what's really important is that wayf finding is critical so when you're walking I I learned this way back maybe 30 years ago at a class where they took vasle and put it on glasses and put it on us and said okay walk across the room it's a great big like 4,000 ft room with a monochromic floor and almost all of us went this way or that way depending on which leg was broken last but when you have a pattern of about 20% Uh u differentia in in terms of darkness and lightness that pattern allows you to find your way along the other thing that's really cool is that there's a whole lot of new senior centers out there that have nursing home railing in them you know down the hallway they actually took out and L thank God but they started out with those young seniors look at that and say I it's a senior it's a nursing home it's not going to come in we disguise that we do Wayne scotting it's decorative we black cherry and we have a little lip that comes out that looks part of the de you know the interior design if you will that lip is your studying you can your hand on it just like a nursing home Rail and nobody knows it's there except for the person that needs it so those are the kinds of things that we smuggle in and um but lighting is really critical too we need we need roughly 40% more light to see properly than uh somebody who's 25 years old that's why my mother always told me when I was a teenager would you drive the car please it's raining and dark I said what's wrong Mom well now I fully understand can I make a quick comment on what you had said you said how can they put the beam in the wrong place surprisingly enough a lot of these people on these projects cannot read drawings properly and we only do weekly site visits for the most part so it's when when that came up I I was called immediately address we were immediately addressed we fig it out but we we are very big on coordination and today now everything's coordinated in 3 mention yes everything is project management I worked on a job where uh the architect put a skylight and he put a structural beam right through the middle of the Skylight oh cool it's like we put the building up and we're like that doesn't work it took it took 3 weeks of special they had to go back to the factory remake double up the headers on either side put headers on either side of it and bolt it back together again we send our structural engineer our model of our design so he can look at it and say okay and then we coordinate with it with his 3D model and hours and make sure that things like that don't happen there's one sneaky Bean got in the way and and actually we were able to resolve it like a good Carpenter but we by the way the the the Builder in wilam has been fabulous PMP construction out of Charles understand that public bid is low low bid m in in um in wam the low bider that we had a lot of trouble with in in um long metal um withdrew that was through the whole Co mess though that was when everything was fluctu we bidding there's nothing worse than what happened through Co in terms of supply chain uh we have a contractor who's always been a good billt Welsley for us he's been absolutely murdered in the North Andover just and I can't help him because it's public bid my responsibility is the taxpayer and my client I can't value engineer it for the contractor he wished we could but and he is an advocate to fight for whatever our client is what they deserve need and what he agreed to in the beginning to make sure it doesn't cuz there are people that slide things we spent a lot of almost all our projects are Massachusetts Public bid okay um 9 next committee question how long do you anticipate the project to take how long do you wanted today tomorrow um to be fair about it it all depends upon how many sites now you you were looking at multiple sites it was great when I went over and looked at peronia Park and said wow this lose the baseball field perfect wonderful because you know we built we built we built long medal right in the middle of the park and we took out the tennis cours and and we built it there and we're able to do it because there had been a school on the site and there's a a community pool and because of that chapter what is it 97 was able to be dealt with quickly because they had they had already used the park for some public use I believe your housing is that way so did we I know but he used it for the Council of AG but I think he ran in I think he ran into little other Ro people just didn't understand it too complicated there used to be a school there used to be a school yeah know technically no I'm not advocating it technically you could pull it off but it would be painful we can't even consider it this committee was told not to even talk about that go to the next please we are fully aware of situation know that we had we had a number of projects that were on parks that got because yeah it it's a very listen the secret in this world is never take away a plane field yeah I don't care where it is just don't take it away or replicate it in short on average our studies run about 4 to 6 months on average depending on the complexity we can do it quicker all right um some some I'll tell you one thing because we understand the programming we can program very quickly and and um uh programming is what it comes down to but the real thing is is introducing the community to it you have to get the community involved and and you've got to get you got to you got to get early into design talking about the programming so you ask the community we do surveys you know there's an example in the Mont study of a Survey Monkey I think they called that Survey Monkey or something like that one of the ones and and we we write the survey and what happens is we send it out to everybody in the community often at tax time or you can pick them up at the library or town hall and what happens is that everybody say oh you know this is what they're doing and it's a PR piece you're selling what you're trying to do to the community and you're introducing it to both young parents who maybe have older parents but you also by the way we get blowback from from Seniors too because they're afraid of tax issues and and the one amazing thing I live in New Hampshire right now my my our offices used to be in Massachusetts for a long New Hampshire doesn't care about seniors they really don't go find the senior sen New Hampshire Massachusetts cares a lot of other communities we worked on a big 30,000 square foot one in Tallahasse Florida a lot of communities care but Massachusetts truly cares and what what's great for Massachusetts and what's great for your community is you can show examples and you we can actually bring some people in to talk to our community from their Community about what a difference it's made in their community and when you hear it from the mouth of somebody like we always like to say in this process we like to take you all on a tour not just ours but lots of seniors have to see what works and what doesn't and we allow you to go and chat with the director without us present cuz you know if I president oh wait what is she saying what is she saying no no you get you get it from the horse's mouth they'll tell you what they like and what they don't like and that's how we learn our centers have changed dramatically because of what we learned from the people we work with and um and that's why for the last 10 years or 15 years I've been lecturing I didn't lecture this year me MCA because Kathy bowler I don't know what anybody knows Kathy she was the director for H yoke then she became the lezant for mcoa throughout the state she retired last year and she's always the one that bugs me about make sure you get your proposal in and I missed it this year so I'll be better next year but your office manag just hold Jamie yeah she does I'm antiviolence but I think about it often put it on your calendar already for next year I sit way back in the corner and nobody nobody can throw things at me um but but part of that process the length of time has a lot to do with how difficult your process is in getting to community on board like in in Belmont which is a very tight community and pretty well off we held probably they had different areas we held probably five neighborhood meeting meetings um with with somebody from the do we have a slutman in here no no get one Finance what the select board has been um very supportive very supportive they have indicated very clearly and through our past iteration have indicated very clearly that they support that's critical and and typically our town manager is actually the secretary for this group so yeah we have good time I don't knew how to spell your last name I'd be doing well but me been practicing um but this one thing we do like I said I I lecture for four hours you know and I I promise you won't get that but well maybe they're getting one quarter but I can tell you that um that we're pretty good at what we do there are things that we've done that people have not been overly happy with but on a whole all of our projects have turned out really well and they've been Welsley one was really unique because I walked out two weeks after it opened I was out in in the patio and I was chatting with a couple of people sitting around having coffee and I said oh you know this is you know I've always liked what Wellsley you know I had a partner in my life who was a Welsley graduate from the college and he said oh yeah yeah but but we're from Western we really like this Center a lot so so we're they had a relatively new center but she said they said this is just the best so it's always nice to hear that but there are times when you if you go there's a nice lady who was on our committee at the start who I run into her at uh at U long medal he said and she's in a little chair now he said wow you know granice how do you like it this is terrible I don't like it at all I always like to say you can build a building and you can ask people on the street and 50% will love it 50% will hate it U for whatever reason um I think she was grumbling because she thought quite honestly the be care about long metal it's a little bit too fancy um we like we hang artwork you know we had these special Walker system that allows you to hang pictures without put holes in the walls and we are encouraged that their art program all these centers have really great art programs if you go to Holo the artist I mean they have a great teacher they buil beautiful artwork all changes all the time often they'll bring in outside artists or photographers or somebody who's traveled to Tibet and has their slideshow or put up in the walls in long metal one of the key players there really wanted expensive beautiful artwork and it is gorgeous but that's all it's hanging out I really feel the centers need to reflect the seniors and if they paint they're not painting by numbers they paint really well and they they have art shows they were gorgeous and what's really fun is that every 3 months they have a art opening wine orur it's in the evening people come and see the artwork uh it's really fun so it's part of the programming if you will and my only criticism I like long medal a lot it's got great things about it I'm not a big fan of the very expensive artwork of which I contributed for one of them and then there are some design things that we have no choice on that other people are yeah took out some of my codes I'm sorry we're you're that's I that concludes our official questions did anyone have any follow-ups that they wanted to ask no aren any less well I'll say a couple things about the team what's really important is that we're have small I used to have a 25 person office in Boston and I was running race you know feed all the mths and get all the things going and we're we did a lot of retail work around the country I was at I was on Planes 5 days a week 4 days a week when my kids arrived um it's very demanding when when 2008 occurred uh a lot of work shut down especially for Architects I found jobs for all of my team and um in fact one them is running a major firm in Boston doing $100 million schools so but we became very tight we've been together I think Dan's been here 10 years we got five you've been here forever five years um when you call us that's who you get when we design Dan and I and Barbie we even let her shim in we we're all part of that process when you deal with us and we come to meetings we write up the notes we distribute them we follow through with that work and when you call I don't take many vacations company over five years I don't think he's ever taken one so I'm always there you know or I'm in my car and you have my cell phone it's by the way we'll leave our cards our cell phones are on there we have an open Office like we do desing our senior we have no in our office like our senior centers we try to keep we only have doors where you need them like the bathroom but um cost saving yeah but it wasn't and also we use our furniture I I'll mention a little bit about how important it is Furnishings are extremely important in these centers I always like the joke about Barry and Elliott Jordan furnitur you used to sell on TV the double stuffers you know I always like never ever use a three- seat couch because what happens as we get older our ABS get a lot weaker and we it's really hard if you don't see you got arms okay when you go to get up how do I leverage myself up like that those arms all our chairs in our multi-purpose rooms are all armed chairs except for some that we use for sit and Def fit which you have to have armless because you're swinging your arms around all of our armchairs love seats and club chairs only in the if you saw our pictures up there I I left that behind you can look at it they're all small tight and the seats are extremely firm because if you sink down for older folks it's really hard to get up so our seating is that way we you'll see we don't always have we don't always have a lot of say in the Furnishings we don't like vinyl or plastic cuz as we get older our core heat gets lost down through our buck and through our back and older people your metabolism drops and your heat gets lost on those chairs and it's really bad for you so we like fabric we use something called kryptonite which is indestructible but it's fabric so if you have an incontinency issue or something you can always be cleaned up and not a problem we put slip things through everything's padded so when you look at our projects uh long metal is a good example we we did all the Furnishings uh we we leave the pict the coloring and fabrics to the team I I get a headache when I think about paint cols um so you give an idea that if you look at our centers they're very different like Wilbraham is blue because Paula really likes blue so blue is a theme all right in long metal green was a theme and I loved it because it's the same color as my house I had to break the news to Mary Beth and you picked the color that I like um but and then um patterns are really important but how you pick out the colors as long as they're not too dark on the floor there really dark squares look like holes and an elderly person walking across a floor with a big dark tile will fall CU they think they're stucking in a hole so those are things we look at doors we always have a different Jam color to the wall color because you walk into the jam if you don't see that differential so all that stff and our glass walls all have frosted frosted bands on it these are all things I've walked into things that don't have I'm sorry go ahead yeah I have a question I you've talked about so many things that I don't know whether you've talked about this or not but um but the en Energy Efficiency of the building very important I mentioned it early on our ceilings are r60 we were big fans of close cell foam and and uh where it's exposed we have intermittent coating like our attic all of our mechanic by the way we spend no money on mechanical rooms our ceilings if you look at our buildings we all have Gable roofs and things we're fairly we have some the project we did in in Lexington is Kentucky is very modern most of New England is a little bit more conservative so some of our buildings are you know we don't have a problem with modernism but I really like the idea of roof structure because we put all these buildings require eru units is mass has a stretch energy code eru units our energy recovery units they're about 5,000 lb and it look like a look like a train the the uh whatever put they're huge they we put them in the Attic all our mechanical spaces in the attic I didn't show you any pictures of that but if if you're spending $700 a square foot on trade I don't want to I don't want to put a a furnace in that so energy wise very high efficiency in terms of we also designed long long metal for pvas they haven't done it yet because they didn't get the funy yet um all of our public jobs now have charging stations for electric vehicles and we use vrf for our variable units are basically heat pumps and backed up with gas and most of our buildings are able to they're not Le be certified but they are able to be yeah we don't like spending your money on LED lead lead certified that's leadership and energy environmental design they charge you it'll cost you extra 50 Grand to do that and then they're allowed to come back every 5 years and if you changed anything without permission they'll take away your certifications we we're not big enough but we build it to those standards yeah all our buildings are lead certified we we did the very first ever Senior Center Adult Center we don't like the word senior anymore we've been using active aging adult centers but the um ncoa doesn't like those anymore the the first one ever silver certified was Belmont and that was all geothermal pump system and um if you if you got the water and you got the money geothermal is great it's going be complicated complicated we like VF it makes your life a lot easier in town you said you like vrf I yeah vrfs are they're a variable frequency drive yeah RFD is it there you go V I get that I'm not good with the I'll let my Engineers figure out but those are those are variable vfd yeah BF thanks variable frequency drive there you go if I remember that it work um we we do that and and um it works out really well our last five we started that in well because that that system became much more usable back about maybe eight eight n years ago it's been around for a while but was not showing up a lot and we a lot of other things like a lot of our patios are built with recycled bricks so it's they're not really bricks they're made out r with tires right we call them bricks right he's right and that's another way to make money people pay to get their names all yeah I think well quite honestly in in um in Walpole they raised $45,000 on the bricks alone but you just said that I mean earlier you said that inconsistency yeah that's these things these things sit like Legos they go into a grid system lock into it and they're soft they're not hard like a brick or like a surrounded tile they're they're very cool we use the term brick because they look like a standard red brick yeah they give that appearance without we engra with a laser they heat it because they burn the nam in uh we do a lot of work with the with the with the with our clients on fundraising too one of my favorites was in Milbury U Judy o Conor was the director there that's a small small town we built a very small little Center uh about 5 6,000 square ft the minimum size is about 6,500 Square ft in order to get the basic programming into it and um she she managed to squeeze 900 bucks out of the bankrupt railroad that went by so I mean you can get money almost everywhere how to be creative any we way late thank you so much for presentation appreciate it we'll leave our cards behind just because I see jeles is here and I this is pretty cheap no Joe I've known Joel for a long long time he's a good guy by well thank you you appr time and I've enjoyed it thanks for coming can I take the tri questions with me yes you can as long as nobody else is written on it yeah right you might want [Music] to you can't we want it who's the contract me how can tell look like I'm Dusty he doesn't call me a contractor CU I don't bang everything are you a contractor too I'm a project manager oh that's too bad construction manager I don't shake hands with guys like that you can tell by thees are toal what kind of project management do you do I made big commercial projects complex of big buildings like a million square feet or six building oh that's so varable d i some of the first ones in that ever put in on enormous pumps fell like you on our committee in wilham we did a 10 story hotel in back lot thank you guys thank you safe journey back did oh I need I need to studies just AEF break for theath let's do a brief break and then we'll come back for our disc that that handout on MCA really study it hard yeah no it's it's a good one yes let's do like a five minute break for anyone who needs to use the facilities and then we'll my watch keeps saying stand up so do do you want to adjourn do you want to adjourn or I usually adjourn for like 5 minutes or 10 minutes and then he picks it up on tap oh we lost the zoom a long time ago oh yeah so that's not necessary so if we want if we want to take a 5 minute break can we we can't continue the conversation after we adjourn is that the point let's just take a f minute break then if you yeah just yeah just take a five minute break I'm just I brought these because the friends of the library are doing a fundraiser tomorrow night at tiny it's called dining for a cars so between 5: and 8:00 p.m. anything you get or you take out or you eat the there um a percentage of it will go to the Friends of the library to do programs anduse pass oh great okay you said that's tomorrow night tomorrow night okay so it's getting it's getting late um but I just wanted to give um we had said uh we might do a preliminary discussion I I want to make sure everyone has a chance um thank you again Ellen for um putting out the ref the document summarizing the reference checks uh I want to make sure everyone has time to go home and reflect on what they've heard tonight maybe double check against the presentations again look at the references we can talk about it in more detail at our next meeting so we should probably do that sooner rather than later because before it all falls out of my head just speak for myself there um but any initial thoughts or things we want to say I sort of like that the last guy Caitlyn he seemed to put a lot of um detail there a lot of thought that one some of the details that he brought up about you know the stairs and you know the falling aspect and and just different things and it seems like um you know he's got a good feel of of that you I absolutely agree I mean you know he just seemed to be the the consumate um Authority on on seeing years and you know the fact that he gives these 4our presentations every year and you know he has these checklists so I you know my sense is that others check other checklists come from his you know you know I don't know that for sure but he just it just seem so knowledgeable and it was like a combination of technical skills and human think he takes a lot of pride in in what he does yeah also and I I think it's I got from him it's more of the I don't know he takes pride in it and really thinks about the building that he's building and and who's it going to be used for really and you know um it's it's more of the human touch I think he really has a sincere human touch and you know it's the the little things like the rails that he talked about you know don't want to offend anybody you know we hide that you know the different things like the frosted glass and you know just just the half that you know he brought in a steel building talked about the they Pros pros and cons with a steel verse woods so he's got a lot of good good things floating around and and seen there's a lot of energy with his team and and I and I thought that bargman Henry also had a had a lot of specificity in their recommendations regarding that is I think that both barin Henry and Catlin had more specificity with how they would like to see the building designed you know what it should be what it should look like what it should feel like um and uh for Abacus that that was somewhat missing it was more the navigating the the cultural zeit gist for for for uh for Abacus as opposed to this is what our building this is why our building designs are so and I thought that bargin Henry did a good job I mean the fact that he was here by himself and came with this and said that this is how we do things um there seemed something more purposeful from and coming from him um but I understand that there's a certain folksy feel to um to Catelyn that there was a certain liability Factor there that this is you know your um but so I mean the last two would be you know the choice would be between those as opposed to the three do you want to add or subtract add or sub attct to any of that well I agree that I thought those were the two that were the best um and were more specific about what they would do and they had opinions and they were you know and based on experience and and all that whether it be that we have a gym but um I I did like their ideas and they seem to be more geared into specifically to seniors and what worked for them I think Catelyn kicks it up a notch you can't argue with the fact that he's obviously kind of this the uh Guru yeah I mean that he knows a lot and he teaches the other people now there's people who say he he feels he knows so much that you know if you argue with him you know well mainly they say he's very opinionated and if you feel very strongly about something like the color of the building you have to push back but when you do he accepts it well so um I don't know I think it's hard uh between those two but I I I didn't expect to like katn because I had heard things about him from people who had worked with him but I was very very impressed by him actually you know what I what I like about him and his firm is that I feel a sense of relief that things I learned in school I don't have to fight about here because he already knows all of them like all of those things are concept of Universal Design that I took classes on right like I don't I he already knows all that like that's the Baseline that we're going to work from um but I agree with you he's a strong personality he's a very strong personality sometimes you need that and and and for me for the fight that we could have right and for me AB because then their staff is very warm they don't have a lot of Direction that's at least my experience working with them um I fell sort of in the Middle with bhna and it's a shame and we'll have to have more discussion about it but I think Dave grub has opinions about bhna that would be better for the other project is what about this side of the table I thought they they were all consumate uh politicians they talked circles and never answered the direct questions they kind of beat around the bush they never really came out and said this is this is this or this is that well we do this or we can do that nobody ever really they did the political thing they're like oh you know and then here here look at this is over here but here's the real question over here but we don't have a definitive product to give them right yeah still but you know when you you know what are your what do your two main factor you you ask a simple question I want two what are your two main factors and they gave you a 20- minute dissertation and they mentioned 18 different things that didn't tell me what are your two main I'm one of those people if I say I want two I want you to give me two I don't want you to give me six I want two but they all did that as as a group but I would say that I agree Caitlyn the Catlin seem to have more of an in-depth dissertation on what he was talking about but he kind of rattled and yes talked around questions instead of answering direct questions glad I'm going last um I'll go again I I don't how to qu frame this I guess it would be to me it's to me it was just no context I thought it was bhna that's the way I believe it at this point in time his professionalism was what I'm looking for his approach was unique he came into the room as a oneperson team and to prove to us that he could run the operation as his as the leader of the team so he was direct in that when he came out um I thought that kman had way too much time to go all over the place um and I would have real problem sitting in a room who goes with someone who goes all over the place like that that was just way over the all over the he was all over the place in his answers and I think the thing that's important right now for us to remember though is what is the scope of this project I don't even think the scope of this project goes anywhere near to the tile on the floor or any of those questions of insulation or anything that's the construction of the building the scope of work of what we're doing now is involved with site selection and those professionals have come along with that and I felt BH and's is not only his proposal but his quality of presentation in stuck to that topic better he didn't need to go off into ceiling tile and insulation I think what happened with Catlin in my own opinion is that he was speaking to as though he spoke to a group of people who knew nothing about buildings so he's just going off and off and all these different topics but in essence we're all going to get professional architectural services they're all going to give us Energy Efficiency we're a green community so we're 20% above the code so we as a a committee already are going to be in a position to understand what construction's all about when he didn't know what a variable frequency drive was that bothered me cuz he was using it in his presentation he was rattling and rattling about different stuff so I like the consistency of the h& that's my own opinion I like this professional approach I like the whole presentation and I want to stick with the scope that we're doing right now I know later on the scope expands but don't we need to check exactly what we're this particular piece is looking for you know versus tile on the floor edging on a stair I mean I know all that stuff maybe you do but I don't we're going to know it though when we go through discuss I built the school so I I learned a lot up there so oh you will you will learn to add to or to support your point I also thought it was interesting that Catelyn brought his whole team and he didn't let him talk I don't know right I mean just as a putting different points out there to thing important you have a group of commun people with different ideas that's good so we're going to figure it out it seems strange that BH and a was only one person yep you thought it was strange yep I thought it I thought it was just perfect that's the way different people think differently I know I'm here notes and I just wrote you know all three can do it and I think we just got to think what's best for the committee SL the town and kind of like K said at this time you know I made notes um bhna he's kind of nuts and BS the way he's thinking about doing it and the way with those decision matrices with all the information CN you know he would easily drive the bus for us and like we said he would be probably hard to to fight with un certain things which could be what we need and I think with um advocus they'd kind of let you you drive the bus that was kind of more open What's the town want here and and I think like what do we need um is kind of what we got to ask but I think Ken you're right I got to kind of go back and look what is the exact scope we're at right now like you know we're hiring an architect um for like a we were on a task order basis as week sort of approach sites and what are we going to do it wasn't like Hey we're doing a feasibility study I mean that could be a scope of what we're doing essentially we're doing a mini one right when we're doing these sites so um and then later on in the process is going to come when we when we have to go out U for design or selection law hiring when we do the full-blown design of the the project so think something things to think about I think we have a tough task because they're all qualified there's no question about you know they all six were qualified you know to do it so it becomes almost a question of personal likes and dislikes and some to some extent which is hard to say in a public venue but sometimes it gets down to you know things that are I think maybe when we come down to is once we start looking at what they're giving us for a cost estimate if Caitlyn is $100,000 more than BHA or BHA is 100,000 more than Caitlyn right Kaitlyn said something about 700 a square foot and one of the others was a th000 those are construction C that's the first gentleman is he's off the wall well because and they all include different things like the $1,000 a square foot is starting from having the idea of a building all the way through to the construction he was right I cuz I had pushed back with total it's the total Thing versus someone might be saying 700 and they're talking about the construction and pursing off all this pre-work as pre-work so um we have to make sure they're comparing did did did you see the proposals that included estimates for the so the hourly rates are pretty much the same um I again you know I'm like a Salesman now myself so I was intrigued by the fact that bhna had listed all those subcontractors in his original thought process that we were going to potentially a subc consultant subcontract the combination and tried to put an allowance to Adu them but interestingly enough they came out to pretty much exactly the same amount it's like $125,000 we're talking about for this this part of the project for almost any of them so I don't think money's going to might not enter into it because I thought there was a lot of similarities between BH and A and C in terms of their data Matrix and what they looked at and how they compared it and how they came up with the best thing a there were a lot of similarities there and um which it sounded like a great plan of you know how to do it and and I was yeah and I was thinking who would who would sell better in front of the town that is if we were to ask either Mr or Mr um Joel um bargman um to get out balone and tell us you know or explain to the town why X Y or Z is better or which would which would be able to pull that together and kind of go to the town in a more kind of coherent way and come up with and I mean based on tonight and again I'm not closing my mind on it this by any stretch because I want to go back and look at everything but based on tonight it would just seem that that Mr bargman would be better better at doing that at going to the town and kind of well that comes back but that comes back to Ken stat too cold it's cold I thought he started I I I thought he started out a little cold but I thought but he did warm up at the end cuz he was excited to show us more of his presentation he wanted to rush through you know at the beginning and and that was that is it you know stand up at town meeting floor they got to shut you right off if you get like that yeah there was you know there was another thing that happened in I don't know if we drew names for the location of the interviews um but he took had the the advantage to come in and just keep going and going and going he had closer to an hour rather than 45 minutes easy over an hour easy over an hour yeah um so yeah in the second gentleman came in the first one late so that whole process was you know was what it was now I was watching the clock with when they started and they each got the first two each had about an extra 5 to seven minutes and then Cyn got about 15 we want to make just one quick comment this has nothing to do with the Architects that they were all on one thing that I learned tonight but two stories yeah I know yeah learn tonight we came with two stories that was a big I would want I every single one of them that was my question I want I want to reflect on that a little bit I mean that kind of I mean I had gone into this and throughout this entire process have been thinking that one story is preferable for any number of reasons and and I was you know I think that this causes me to think again about the site and what the building will look like and how the building will be used in a way that I didn't anticipate doing and I think when we first started talking about this like coming back to 2 and a half years ago when I started we were talking about an 8 to 10,000 foot building in which case I was very strongly in favor of a one-story building we have talked modified gone the community center route we've talked about more active Fitness there was no fitness center at all no fitness facility at all located in the first one that the Abacus did for the town so I'm more open to the two-story model um but when I think about that you do really have to think about Staffing because if you can't collaborate with your staff it really interrupts productivity and so it's got to be carefully thoughtfully laid out because you do need staff upstairs so that's just a consideration um adding more staff and yeah I mean we we'll have to have more staff in the new building anyway but um yeah did open up some possibilities that I hadn't really it was obvious they all three but they they made a lot more sense it's in you know instead of that you're hating that much compared to that much it makes sense then I think of myself at home even climbing you know going up to I mean I I do it and I can do it but it's jesz I have to go upstairs but it's they want you to and I want to sit here with you can run I want to sit here with the remote thank you very much but Katie and I went to North Andover when right when it opened short risers their steps I was so impressed because as he said they're only 6 in 6 in they are so easy to walk up it's amazing imagine if like the steps at Fenway Park were just not as deep like that's the way it is it's it's they're very there's also a huge elevator right next to the stairs to not make it too big so that it actually is inconvenient to take the elevator but um yeah I was very surprised the size of the elevator is going to gener be determined by the well no by wheel Ada it's going to be what what size wheelchair can you fit cuz it's going to be able to get in there and turn around and all that we just did our we just did ours over show schu I need to get lot of money and I don't want to get I don't want to get dug in too much right we had to redo the whole thing it was time to revamp the elevator yeah it it's changed H they life they have a life it's almost 9:00 I'm hungry um when can we meet again tomorrow tomorrow let's do it great contract negotiations all week so we unfortunately don't have during Holy Week BL me have the town teachers hold up now oh those guys Strikers think oh you have it okay awesome okay so we really what oh there's nothing on Fridays oh okay all right so skinny um so Wednesday the 3 is available that's a week from now um Thursday the 4th and when you say Wednesday the 3rd what times or 5 6 7 there's nothing on the nothing those town on the town calendar those those nights is that too quickly next week or I mean sooner the better I should we do six because I six is easier for Dave da for you one hopefully yeah cuz I have softball hopefully softball will be over by then okay sorry my hat into that now so I can do about that and because you're on vacation girls good for you good for you yeah so Dan won't be able to be here but write up your suggestions if you'd like I could put something together thinking yeah quick little memo yeah yeah be great do we want to be in a position next week to award I mean I think we can like like they said we can take this at whatever Pace we want to now I'm thinking going to see some of the buildings yeah I was wondering about that is it worth not not a quorum just happen to be driving by I mean you can do that either way you can schedule site visits as a quorum event an official event or you can go as subcommittees um I mean I've I've seen we've both seen North Andover right um I've seen Andover in Lexington and you've seen Andover uhhuh um but I mean I think if there are particular properties is that's an important piece of the decision well I yeah it would be good to you know see a bhna property and you one thing too is uh April 12th or when our rfps are due the private ver property rfps to keep in mind if you want to schedule anything around that we have something else to talk about it IM meting they those had to get pushed we tried to get them earlier but the so on April requires I'm sorry April 12th is the final date for due date for the private property rfps or proposals I guess have we hady come back yet that's three weeks from yeah yeah and then what would it take and so then we we will look at whatever comes in and consider whether or not we want to pursue it that's just I I just want to mention so know do we want to com do we want to combine those two functions into one meeting well so that's the question then you're going to go you're going to be looking at more like one two three four in into the fourth week that would be four weeks from now yeah um yeah I mean so do we want to meet on the the third or the 10th I mean I can do either let's try to do it sooner or later maybe so is the third fast enough for people who want to see a bhna building to see it be I mean I don't should we say that people if people are going to look at buildings they should look at is are people feeling that Abacus is kind of falling off the thing or for me yes me it has yeah yeah that looks like so maybe we could focus on uh bhna and um uh Catelyn and try to look at one of each of there I'm wondering if North Andover would be a good choice for Catelyn because it's a recent they just opened this fall so it's a recent project of his um she doesn't love him so it's a the director doesn't love him so it's a well-rounded look it's not that far away yeah um and it's a two-story on a small lot and then I don't I mean that twostory thing has really thrown me for a loop now I'm thinking now I'm thinking two stories on a big lot yeah to get the pocket the other thing that happened tonight is very interesting all the way from 35 cars to 100 right yeah which is fascinating and advocat pretty much stood their ground when they were telling us how many parking spaces we needed and how much land we needed so we got a lot of things to figure out M yeah yeah so if we if we did the third we would be calling some places tomorrow trying to figure out if we could you know come do we have to visit as a group or can we just go well I mean I think I think you're going to want to have a pocket of three or four people go rather than asking the director to give you a tour to a bunch of different people you know what I'm saying um plug the director once yeah all right so I mean and I think it would depending on how many people are available to do it I mean the thing is if if if it results in a quorum we have to have it posted and all the that's not a big deal that's okay um but that's too big and well what I'd be saying what I was thinking is if we want to do that I would suggest that I could call tomorrow for example and see if we could get an appointment for one on the 29th and one on the 1 get them posted the 20 it's good Friday okay maybe the first and the second but you know but right up to the up to the third or the fourth but do you really have to have it even if you have a quorum if we're not really discussing anything or taking any votes does it really still have to be posted in my view have to post it a meeting have to post it if there's a forum but if there's not right and and that's the thing but it it doesn't take that long for me to come up with an agenda that just says site visit of this property and I submit it it's 20 minutes worth of work for me it's not that big of a deal and if we don't have a quorum that's fine yeah if you don't have it that's fine too so what do we what's a what's a quorum for the what are we n seven of us so five would be a quorum so I don't think we'll get a quorum well there's nine of us right so if if only four if only four people go then it's not a quum so you don't really have to and I'd perfectly fine saying since I've been to North Andover I don't have to go you can remove the two of us out of the Quorum um I would love to see a b& one though so um so is one in Newton it's the Newton Center for active Okay learning living which is pretty close oh that was the one that was that was one it was squeez on they squeezed it into see anything like what we have here again you know well but I mean yeah the land and so forth but um certain they're not going to get it on a golf course like bam no so the question I think is are we do we want to meet on the third or fourth and then we can which of those two days do you want and then we can walk back trying to get the site visit from there anyone care Wednesday versus Thursday prefer the third but wednes better the third is the third is Wednesday yeah yeah it doesn't bother me I'm free yeah I to okay so third is the preference okay so let's have our next meeting is April 3rd at 6:00 p.m. and then um we'll try and get a site visit early like first second or third y of that um and you know those site visits will have to be during the day cuz those facilities are I mean endover is not open at night orth endover I don't know about the other one noisy Hub and then the conversation area I would what I didn't like about that is you walked into a wall with the desks the staff desks right next to it felt very much like coming into a doctor's office right there what I would say if I was if we were to choose them would be like okay I hear what you're saying but within the sight line has to be that fireplace I want to see the fireplace and the chairs and the lounges felt like with the sine uh nursing home to a certain extent you know you walk in and there's the desk and all and I was but again that that director that was North Andover that was catlin's property I simple was that he just told us that that's not the way they'd make them he just said everything's open I just the rest of it is is good but yeah so that one that one opens right in you walk in right into the staff area and when you turn down the hallway then you have that big open space um but that particular building is all white and gray or white and it was it was very white in there and that particular that particular director tionalized M but but actually when when you actually when you actually look at it though it makes sense to me because the director is a sophisticated older woman like rocks a white pant suit not to be too informal about it but like it's you can see no no what I'm saying is like you can see from her perspective it was sleek and sophisticated but also it was a little sterile like I would go for warmer colors am I being recorded right now yes you are am I okay um so she came in after it had been design and stuff and started making changes they even mentioned you remember when they wanted to make all the changes yeah so there was some clashing there but um it's very it's very nice you know and there's the where you can look down over what everybody's doing and you know uh is that they the country is that the one that's near the country club that they no that was wilham the golf course you mean yeah I think that was but they have an outdoor space they have a lot to it I found all three of them there a Pepsi Pony up here enough of our water we looked at it did they say all right in the committee one of the didn't we try to get a hold we asked Dan to call him actually I think P we asked you to call uh the other gentleman who now built houses and whatnot about Pepsi land they have a chunk of land but it's they have a they have a well yeah right off of right off of uh Snake Hill that's Pepsi yeah they have a well back there with 400t radius and there's wet ones I think I looked at that there a guy that checks you can see one of the little things from the road from Snake Hill they go and check every well is is um is this Handover is this the most recent Catlin thing or he's got one that's under construction right now but this is the most recent punch just a soft opening in March and it's they're doing the punch list you know the other thing just about taking that side visit um I don't have to take a s this is my own personal issue but it it's going to be hard for us to go into a site like if what you just mentioned at North Ando but what if that committee said that's what we want we want that station at the front that may not be what we want but we might find that to be a negative so it doesn't really help us to see it there right so we don't know what all these other committees re how they resolve the design with their architect right well that's you have to go into it with that point of view you can't go into it say the door might have been a security issue maybe somebody broke into the other one and they want make sure nobody could buy that front area it's like when you walk into a house and you want to buy it you can't focus on whether the walls are painted blue you have to figure out if you like all the other things about it because the blue wall is changeable so we can design we can work we'll have our own criteria we have your own criteria yeah I mean good news is I think both of them are very good yeah good I think we get a good design from either one it's just a question all right it is 9:00 on the dot do I have a motion to adjourn wej second all right all right thanks everyone all right