Today with my lunch I reviewed the minutes of our last Board of Selectmen meeting. A few niggling things to note and/or follow up on next Tuesday.
Mike sent me the minutes of the Building Committee’s 5/29 meeting and a 2010 report on the condition of the water tower at the Medfield State Hospital. The water tower sounds like it is in good shape, which is good news, as I thought that Ken had said it would need replacing soon, so I had been focused on it as a future town problem. I recall seeing the state have it painted inside and out within the last ten years.
Bill Maassaro used me to get per pupil costs over time so he can analyze the prior 440 unit Medfield State Hospital development for the new MSH committee, and today I got those figures from Charlie Kellner, the schools business manager. Bill emailed today with requests for information about the assessed values of the proposed buildings and the other town costs used in the DCAM proforma – good analysis by Bill. I sent out to Bill the pupil costs and sent along Bill’s analysis and request for the other information to Mike and Kris.
Spoke to the owner of car dealerships about how he liked to arrange his buildings, to try to get some insight into the proposed new DPW garage. The car dealer opined that he did not think it would be that much more expensive to make a building wider to allow for a center turning aisle, as it just requires a “little more steel” for the spans. A DPW garage like Framingham’s has just one or two doors, but then needs a center aisle to drive through the building. Our design has a square for offices with two opposing wings with many rows of bays, each with a pair of doors. The repair shops on the car dealerships are basically big enclosures for moving vehicles through, and I notice that the new ones all seem to have few doors, so I got to wondering. The Building Committee says it adds to much to the cost to add the center turning aisle to make it make sense, and that the site may not accommodate a building that shape in any event.
Medfield02052's Blog 
Pete,
As a quick response to your concern regarding the design of the DPW, I’d like to address the topic you raised regarding the best layout. The center aisle approach may be better from a functional perspective, but there are a few reasons why is it is more costly to do a center aisle style garage versus the currently proposed design.
Firstly, as you compared this to a car dealership, you must keep in mind that a car maneuvers in much less space than a large dump truck with a plow on the front.
Secondly, if you add a center aisle travel lane to the enclosed space, you are greatly increasing the volume of the building. You are adding steel, masonry, insulation, roofing, concrete slab, lighting and increasing the capacity of the ventilation system to accommodate the additional volume of enclosed space. This is only offset by the decrease in door count and I assure you that this is a net add to the project.
Thirdly, outside of initial cost, you are adding to operational cost by increasing the square footage of enclosed space that needs to be ventilated, lit and maintained.
The Permanent Building Committee is working hard to reduce the initial cost of this project as well as the long term life cycle cost and with over 75 combined years of design and construction experience on the Committee, I assure you that all options are being explored in a thoughtful manner. We hope you and all interested residents are able to join us for the first in a series of public hearings on this topic this Thursday, June 7th at 7:30pm at Town Hall.
Hope this helps and don’t hesitate to contact me if you have any questions.
Regards,
Mike Quinlan, AIA
Member, Permanent Building Committee
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Mike Thanks for the information. The town is fortunate to have your expertise and that of your colleagues looking at the issue, While I am quite interested and concerned, I have no expertise on these issues. Pete Best, Pete Osler L. Peterson t 617.969.1500 m 508.359.9190
Sent from my smart phone. Please excuse my brevity.
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