ARUNDEL, Maine — Residents got a look at a proposal for a new town hall Monday night, a building that is anticipated to reflect the town’s agricultural heritage and meet the community’s needs into the future.
Attended by approximately 30 residents, town officials, and members of the Municipal Facility Committee, Monday’s public informational meeting on the town hall project was the first of many to come, said committee chairman Jack Turcotte.
The committee, made up of eight residents from diverse backgrounds, as well as selectmen and Town Manager Keith Trefethen has been meeting since April of 2018, working to create a building design that reflects the rural setting of the Limerick Road site and depicts the farming and agricultural heritage of the town of Arundel.
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In drafting a design, the group interviewed current and past town staff and visited town offices in other communities. Their design was then passed on to the team at Port City Architecture in Portland to manage the project.
“We kept it very simple and that’s a core guiding principle for us as we move forward,” Turcotte said of the building plans.
The current town hall, Trefethen said, was built in 1900 and became a municipal building in 1974. Its site is shared with the Arundel Fire Department, and there are 34 parking spaces, which Trefethen called “highly inadequate” for the 14 to 15 staff members, plus community members.
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On voting day, fire apparatus is moved out of the fire station so polling locations can be moved in for voting to take place there. Trefethen said it is a “challenge” for staff, and presents parking problems for voters.
He described offices without doors for privacy, having to walk through one office to get to another, carpeted flooring that is falling apart, inefficient windows through which cold air drafts in, and an employee bathroom that does not meet ADA requirements. That bathroom is also where the town’s IT server is stored “because it’s really the only place we can keep it right now.”
“There are some challenges that we are up against right now,” Trefethen said, citing the inadequate space for staff, poor traffic flow, and a lack of privacy and storage.
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Board of Selectmen Chairman Dan Dubois said the town has discussed a new town hall “for many years,” and reviewed a number of sites, including town-owned properties, that did not allow for future growth, were costly, or had significant deficiencies.
The Limerick Road land, a total of 47 acres, was purchased through a partnership with the Arundel Conservation Trust. The trust plans to create walking and biking trails on 37 acres that will connect to the Eastern Trail, while the town plans to construct its new town hall on the remaining 10 acres.
“That property affords us a lot of nice things,” Dubois said, including off-street parking and town meeting space that the community can fit in.
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As currently designed, the approximately 8,000-square-foot building includes a public meeting space for approximately 125 people, standard-size offices for town departments (according to what is required for code), a vault for storing town documents, and ADA accessible bathrooms. There would be 66 parking spaces on site.
The committee is exploring operating the building “as near net zero as we can,” said committee member Steve Dalzell, which could include a solar array that would power the town hall, the fire station and the public works building.
“It would be pretty cool if we could get there,” Dalzell said. “At the very least, it will be an extremely tight building and will cost very little to run.”
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The committee is currently estimating a cost in the $2 to $2.5 million range, but that has yet to be finalized. Lita Semrau with Port City Architects said the cost will be more concretely determined as building materials are finalized. She said the group will have a more definitive cost by its next public meeting.
Residents who spoke Monday said they were supportive of the project as it is evolving, overall, and asked what would happen to the current town hall. Dubois said selling the property is not feasible and renovating would be cost-prohibitive.
The Municipal Facility Committee meets every other Tuesday. Turcotte said two mailers describing the project have been sent to residents and a third will be sent out shortly. Additional public meetings will be held, he said.