STM asks voters to decide on$5.3 million restoration project

GRANBY – In order to get its municipal offices under one roof, the town of Granby is requesting voters to approve a $5.3 million restoration project of the former West Street School building at a Special Town Meeting next week.

The Special Town Meeting will be held on Monday, Dec. 11, at 7 p.m. in the East Meadow School gym. The vote on funding the West Street building project is the only item on the warrant.

One of the reasons for the project is due to the fact that the town is renting the Town Hall Annex building for $25,000 annually and has 18 months to determine what to do with the offices within the building since the property owner is seeking to sell it. Granby Town Administrator Chris Martin explained the funding sources for the project in a STM information session held last week.

The town proposes to use $1.8 million in ARPA funds, $1.4 million in unspent prior general fund articles, and $2.3 million in unspent capital project articles.

The cost of the project includes installation and/or repairs of a sprinkler/fire protection system, windows and doors, the HVAC system, a water system, and PCBand asbestos removal.

The funding also covers Owners Project Manager’s fees, designer/engineer fees and contingency, according to the future of the West Street building document on the town’s website.

The West Street building committee, appointed in January of this year, was assigned the task of determining the best course of action for the use of the building, which has been largely vacant since 2018.

The town currently maintains the building for $23,000 a year.

The committee determined the best use of the property was to renovate it.

Committee Chair Lynn Mercier explained the building would be able to accommodate current municipal offices, the senior center, as well as room for more in the future.

“As the structure of the building was sound, the roof was relatively new, and the existing 44,000 square feet of space would be more than adequate for the town’s needs,” she said. “The space as it exists, is capable of conducting town meetings, town elections and has the potential for a community recreational center in the future.”

One of the major priorities of the project for the town is the removal of a single-wall oil tank, which was supposed to be removed, but wasn’t, according to Martin.

“The concern we have is that we know it’s a single wall. We don’t know if its leaked. That’s the first thing before we even go forward with that building,” he said.

He said the town must determine whether the tank has leaked into the soil and to remove it before any work is done on the West Street building.

“If we find out there is a leakage and there’s contamination of the soils, we know that $116,000 is not going to cover it. You’re talking up to $1 million and if surrounding wells aren’t contaminated,” Martin said.

If that is the case, the town would need to address remediation and requirements from the Department of Environmental Projection, Martin added.

The plan is to move to a propane mini split for the heating and cooling of the building, following the removal of the tank.

Finance Committee Chair John Libera Jr. said he supported the allocation.

“When you look at the long-term picture of it,” he said. “The fact that there is $5 million in other funds, including ARPA funds, if you took all that money and put it back into the stabilization fund…then you’d have a big pile of money in that fund. You’d still have the same question of ‘what do we spend money on?’”

He said having the municipal offices in one central location is a good use of the funds.

He added that if the town needs to address the oil tank and unforeseen issues with it, that the town will decide what to do from there rather than simply proceed forward with the West Street building project.

Selectboard member Glenn Sexton said he wanted to remind people if the ARPA funding given to the town was not used, they could potentially lose it.

“It’s a benefit to us to move forward with the project. It’s taxpayer money that the federal government gave us, and I’d hate for them to take it back,” he said.

If the voters approve the expenditure, the committee plans to continue working on the project, with the oil tank being the first matter addressed. Barring any issues, the project has an estimated completion date of December 2024, according to the future of the West Street Building information sheet on the town’s website.

If the voters do not approve the article, the town will continue to pay for general maintenance on the building until it is decommissioned. The estimated cost of decommissioning due to asbestos abatement and demolition would be about $2.5 million.