Committee is done doing homework
By Caitlyn Kelleher JOURNAL REPORTER

The Westminster Senior Center Building Committee members feel like they have done their homework and are ready to move forward, but they need to have to formal bid work done.

The committee has worked for the last few months to determine a square footage for the future building, as well as a potential list of uses for different areas of spaces. The committee has also met with community members with experience in different stages of construction.

"We're at a bottleneck now until we get those two RFPs out," committee member Jim Moriarity said.

The committee needs a civil engineer to create a site design for the land at 69 West Main St. The process, which is formally bid, has been on hold until the town received the topographical map of the parcel.

"There are a lot of site features that are nice that you want to keep through this area," Heinzer said.

The town also needs to have a demolition plan created for the buildings on the property, which needs a series of health inspections and hazmat inspections. An earlier bid for the work came in way over budget. Town Coordinator Karen Murphy had issued the first bid and has tried to lower the cost of the second attempt on the bid.

The committee met with Brent Heinzer, a Westminster resident and an architect with Heinzer Associates Inc.

He liked the sketch of a building committee member Neysa Miller had drawn.

"It's a dream," she said of the sketch that includes everything from a craft room, offices, and a kitchen and a miniature golf course.

Miller and the rest of the committee have decided as they get a price estimate it will be easier to cut then to then to add.

Heinzer said the sketch is also good because he, or any other architect that is the low bidder on a future RFP, would know what the committee is thinking about a flow to the building would include.

He said an architect's job will be to do the formal design of the building and show the code issues and other flow issues to the schematic sketches.

He said he thought the town was ready to support the cost of building a new senior center.

"This is a gaping hole in the town right now," Moriarity said.

The committee has a commitment from Montachusett Regional Vocational Technical School to do some schematic designs, which can be presented to an architect for finalization.

Heinzer also suggested adding 30 percent to the size of a building that would fit the current population. He suggested this because the committee would have a hard time convincing anyone to expand in the next 10 years.

The current size is 10,000 square feet, based on a state suggested standard of seven square feet for each resident over 60.

The committee also wants to look at the possibility of creating a building that uses green re-useable energy.