An overview drawing of the proposed Westfield Senior Center that will be located on Noble Street. (Photo by Frederick Gore)
WESTFIELD – Mayor Daniel M. Knapik will send a request Thursday to the City Council to appropriate $371,000 from the city’s free cash account to complete the design effort for the Senior Center on Noble Street.
The state Department of Revenue certified the city’s free cash account at $3 million. The DOR certification is needed before any of those funds can be appropriated.
Knapik said this morning that the $371,000 will take the project through the design phase and to the bid process of the construction phase. The finds will pay the design team of Dietz & Company Architects of Springfield which is teaming up with Courtstreet Architects of Newton and the Owners Project Manager, Diversified Project Management of East Hartford, to complete the site plan and floor plan of the two story, 20,000-square-foot facility that will be constructed on the former Mary Noble estate.
“The architect is in charge of putting the contract bid package together,” Knapik said. “The project is still on target for release of the bid in April.”
Council on Aging Executive Director Tina Gorman said “that money will take us through the design phase to the bid phase. Once we have those (bid) numbers we’ll go to the City Council for a bond.”
The estimate for the project is $7 million.
“We’ll have a definite number to give the City Council when the bids come in,” Gorman said.
The Senior Center Building Committee has established a timeline to push the project toward construction next fall, with the opening of the new facility slated for the fall of 2015.
The committee anticipates a construction phase of 14 months beginning in the late summer or early fall if the other milestones are met. The project will be presented to the Planning Board this month or in early February for special permit, site plan and stormwater permit review and approval.
Gorman said the Friends of the Senior Center Group will initiate a fundraising campaign this spring with the goal of raising $500,000 to furnish the center at the end of the construction phase.
“We’re laying the ground work to determine what we’ll need for each room,” Gorman said. “Right now it’s all preliminary, but we don’t want to wait. We want to be methodical. We want to put the project on the radar screen, to make the community aware of the status of the Senior Center Project.”
