WESTFIELD – Three architectural firms were interviewed Thursday by a review committee charged with selecting a consultant to design the proposed $6 million, 20,000-square-foot senior center.
Tina Gorman, executive director of the Council on Aging, told the COA board members Tuesday that eight companies responded to the city’s request for proposals (RFP) to provide design services.
Tammy Tefft, city purchaser and a member of the review committee, said Friday the eight firms were screened and three selected for the interviews conducted Thursday.
“We were looking for firms with experience designing a senior center,” Tefft said. “That experience was one of the requirements stated in the RFP.”
The three firms are: Reinhardt Associates of Agawam, Dietz & Company Architects of Springfield and John Catlin & Associates Architects of Quincy.
Tefft said the review committee plans to meet and discuss the firms and decide if it wants to conduct a second interview with any of the candidate firms.
“I would like to make a decision by the end of the month on which firm will be the designer and enter into negotiations for a design services contract,” she said.
The review committee includes Tefft and Gorman, as well as at-large City Councilor James R. Adams, and the former COA chairman and COA member Jack Leary. Frank Kennedy and Tim Singleton of Diversified Project Management of Newton, the city’s project manager, are also members of the committee.
Gorman said that the city is still working to ensure that the property willed by Mary Noble to the Housing Authority can be used as the senior center construction site.
The problem, Gorman said, is that the will does not specifically allow the property on Noble Street to be used for anything other than senior housing. The Law Department is working with the state Attorney General’s office to determine the city’s best course of action in resolving the will issue.
The AG’s office has advised the city to work with the inheritors to vacate their interest in the property. The line of succession has the Housing Authority as primary inheritor, then the City of Westfield, then the Noble Hospital board of trustees. If the city accepts the property under the terms of the Noble will it has to be developed as a park.
The AG’s office has indicated that if all three vacate their position the city can petition the Hampden Probate Court to allow the Housing Authority to pass ownership of the property to the COA, which then could construct the senior center on that side.
The Housing Authority has already indicated that it would agree to transfer not only the Noble property, but also a second piece of undeveloped property in front of the Dolan Ely apartment complex for the project.
“When the city petitions the (Probate) Court, we’d want everybody with an interest to be supporting (the property’s) use as a senior center,” Gorman said. “The project is at a standstill until this is resolved. The Law Department doesn’t want to go to the court until we have everyone on board.”
The Noble Hospital trustees are slated to meet on January 26. Gorman said she plans to attend that session to present the issue and ask for a formal vote of the board to support the city’s petition to the Probate Court.
