 So, we'll get started shortly. Welcome to our community chat. Today's topic is the North Amherst Library. We'll get started shortly. So, we have a special guest host today. Breonna Sundrade isn't with us, but Ansel Mills is filling in, capably, for as our guest host, like today old Johnny Carson days. That's an old reference. Yes, it works. So welcome, everyone. And I will allow our special guest to introduce themselves. Paul, do you want to start? Sure. I'm Paul Backelman. I'm the town manager. Guilford. I'm Guilford mooring on the superintendent of Pollock Works. I am Charles Roberts with June Rital Architects, please. Thank you. And I'm Chris Farley. I'm a project architect with Cune Rital Architects. And I'm Angela and I'm pinch hitting today for Breonna. And our topic is the North Amherst Library. So we welcome everyone. I think we're going to do a quick overview. So Paul, if you want to give some updates. Sure. So, topic of the day is vaccinations on Angela and our team at the town manager's office and at the senior center and our COVID vaccine ambassadors have just been hammered with lots of phone calls. We've made it our mission to answer as many calls as we can and to return calls if people leave messages. It's quite different than almost every other community. And the 211 number at the state is just is crashing along with a lot of other things at the state because this morning the governor opened up vaccinations to people 65 and older, which is a very large population. And quite frankly, there is not enough vaccinations vaccine available to serve everybody. The other big change in the governor's announcement was that they are looking to funnel as many people as possible through the large vaccination sites in our area. Eastfield Mall is the large vaccination site. Other locations are in Danvers at Fenway Park and at the at Foxboro and at Gillette Stadium. This is not a path that we would have gone through. We think local vaccination sites are much more productive and more accessible to our community. So we are working to reach out to the state to see if we can continue to host and maybe collaborate on a regional basis to offer vaccines locally. You can also get vaccines at UMass, but it all is based on supply. If we don't have the supply of vaccine, we can't offer the the vaccines to people. So and the state is limited. I think they get over just over 100,000 vaccines a week. They don't go very far. There's hundreds of thousands of people who are now eligible. So it's a long, rocky rollout. We're doing a fantastic job. Our vaccine stations are doing, you know, we're, we're able to do hundreds of vaccines when we're able to be open and we have the vaccines in hand. It's a, it's a logistical challenge. So spent a little bit longer than I normally do on that, but that's sort of the thing that's been dominating us. It's the most important thing to our community is how do I get a vaccine? Who's getting the vaccine and making sure that it's efficient and as possible. So anything you want to add to that, Angela, because you're talking to lots of folks, what's the most common thing? It's been a really frustrating morning because the state is our conduit for information. They're rolling out the supply of the vaccine. And so to not be able to tell people where to find a vaccine has been, I think, frustrating for all of us. Good. So, Gopher, do you want to start or Charles, who would like to talk, give a little synopsis of what we're the North Amherst library, which is our topic of the day, which is very exciting topic. Gopher, do you want to just sort of give a sort of a little rundown on the genesis of this and how we get to where we are. I can do that. I just had to unmute myself. Okay. So this project started with some interest in the people in North Amherst. They acquired some money from the town through town meeting to do a preliminary study which has been conducted. And from that, we've moved forward. We have a donor come forward and fund the final part of the design we're right in. We're in right now. So, that's kind of how the thing got started. People wanted bathrooms in the library which there's no bathrooms now that are usable to the public. And from that this little project has grown out or we have accessible bathrooms we make the library accessible. And we have a small community room which can be used post pandemic times. And a lot of three people can meet in that little community room we're designing right now with the COVID restrictions but once the restrictions are up, you'll be able to be able to be used as a community room like it's supposed to be. So those are the three things that are two things that we wanted was accessibility to the library and bathrooms and we added in a community room as well. So that's kind of how this all started and got going. We're now in the design phase and schematic drawing phase and then Chris and Charles you want to go. Sure. Anshiel do you want to bring up the image. Thanks. Okay. So this is a view of the of the addition where we're putting on the library from the north. The floor plan will show you to sort of put it in the context of the existing library. But, you know, there's a couple of ways you can approach a project like this the North Amherst library is an important building. It's much beloved. And so when you think about adding on to it, you know, you can do something that's sort of very modern and complimentary, or you can do, you can imitate the existing library or you can do something where you sort of take the cues of the existing building and add on to it and create something that's new and has its own expression yet is kind of very much about the language of the existing building. The approach we took here. So this view is is from the the Northwest is coming in off of Thunderland Road towards a new accessible entry with that arched opening. And there's the the community media room is off to the right, I believe and then and then off to the left is the is the bathrooms, or maybe it's the other way around. It's the it's the other way that the the bathrooms are to the right and the community room is to the left in this image. Okay, thanks Chris. And so we're using we're using very similar materials to the existing library it's it's a it's shingle and painted trim, we're matching the roof pitch which is a steep 14 and 12 roof pitch, and we're using a durable roofing material in this case it's standing seam metal roof, the existing library I believe is slate. And so it has a certain kind of, you know, durability and and and timeless quality in that respect. And then the architecture itself is is is complimentary in terms of the way the windows are configured and the amount of windows in the building and overall scale of it. We're just trying to create a, you know, a welcoming inviting community space that is accessible has a meeting room and has new bathrooms as well. So maybe we can go to the next. Sure. Next slide and Chris do you want to walk through the plan quickly here for folks. Sure. So the, the lower kind of somewhat grayed out rectangle that's the existing library. And right near the bottom is the existing main entry this is on the south side. The new addition is going to be on the north side. And the new entry is is on the north there's a covered a covered entry. When you come through the main door, there's an entry lobby just to the left on this image is where the accessible bathrooms and storage and janitor's closet will be. And then to the right is where the meeting room is. There's a bay window to the north and a bay window to facing the east Montague Road. As Gilford said, post COVID, this room can probably comfortably seat around 40 people. So it's it's certainly big enough for a good community meeting. And then if you go through the entry lobby through the double doors into what we call the connector, which is the kind of square shaped space in this plan. There's a there's a main stair that goes up to the existing library level. The new addition is about four feet, three and a half or four feet below the library level. So it's a half light stair of stairs up. And then there's also a wheelchair lift, which makes just to the right of that stair, which makes the existing library level and stacks, fully accessible. Did you want to mention, then there's the stair down to the left of that it goes to the level. Good point Charles yes there's a there's a staff only stare down to the existing basement, which is currently being used as storage and the intention is that it will continue to be used as storage. It is not publicly accessible. It is just for library staff. And I guess the other the other important thing to point out here is including southern entry to the to the building the main entry that will remain, but it will no longer be used. Everyone will be coming in the the fully accessible north entry. And as you saw in the rendering, there will be parking, including accessible parking just to the north and a sidewalk of going between the addition and the new parking. The main entry will become the main entry. Another thing that's interesting about this designer, or is the fact that the, the addition can can function independently from the library. So the bathrooms and community room amenities of the addition can can be open, while the library is is closed so that it just it offers flexibility in terms of staffing and in that and how the two buildings sort of relate as one availability to the public, even if the library may be closed. Right. Okay, so as we open it up for the question and answer period I just wanted to remind people you can use the question and answer function. You can raise your hand and we'll bring you into the zoom room so you can ask your question and if you're on your phone you just need to press star nine to ask a question. And I see we have some questions waiting. I will ask this is in relation to the vaccines. If people make a vaccine appointment but there is no vaccine what happens their appointment. Sarah, that's a great question. My understanding is that we've only been booking appointments for the vaccine we have on hand. I know we postpone today's clinic to the 25th people are keeping their same appointment time, and the location is the same it's at the level just the date has changed to the 25th. So we're really trying to just make appointments when we know we have vaccine on hand. And so that's this is one where the weather and the other parts of the country really inhibited delivery. So our vaccine for today is still in Michigan. So we emailed everybody but also our team was calling all night, you know, all not all night but starting late afternoon and through through the evening calling everybody to connect with anybody who had an appointment today to make sure that they knew they should should not come in with them. They should come in next Thursday instead. And so there's another question that asked if the lift will go down to the basement. Yes, the lift does go down to the basement. Okay. So we have a question from Meg Gage. Meg, if you want to ask your question. Go ahead. Need to bring me in but anyway, thank you. Everyone this. First of all, I'm really proud of our town for how well we're dealing with COVID and just generally how well. We've just made a huge creativity and can do attitude. It's really, I don't know any place that's doing as well with the various tears and so on. So thank you town. I have a great suggestion that we start thinking right now about the nitty gritty details of how the community room will be used when the library is not staffed. And I'm really grateful, extremely grateful that the plan has always been that it'll be usable outside the 19 or 20 hours that their staff and we also know we don't want to be sort of subtly pressuring the town to suddenly hire more staff. So it's really, it's been so stretched. I can easily imagine thinking this through and thinking, gosh, we really can't let the public into a town building without any staff there. And there are all sorts of ways we could fix it with either docents who are highly trained or I just urge us to do that now so that it doesn't become a controversy down the road. And we really need the community room up here. We have a survival center on the weekend which when it's empty, we have to pay the staff. And we, we can go to banks but it's kind of far away or. Anyway, I'm really grateful to everybody for doing something positive during this hard time and it would be really easy to just pull a blanket over your head. I hope my suggestion is helpful. I'm not seeing it as a problem. I'm just seeing it as something we should address sooner rather than later so that it doesn't catch us unaware said, Oh shoot, this is a town building and people want to the public, you know, there have to be some restrictions on who can, you know, conditions or, you know, it's open all night long. Obviously, there has to be some plan and I'm sure we'll come up with one. Sorry, I should have said that briefer. I'm going to exit. No, I can't exit. Angel will take care of you. Guilford, you want to address that. You mute it though. My chair squeaks a lot so I mute myself a lot. We've kind of addressed this with a door entry system we're going to use the same key swipe system that's used in public works and then some of the recreation areas in town. And what we've done with the recreation areas is someone wants to use a facility. They can get the key, and they sign it out and they're responsible for it and they can open the door and they can make sure things locked up when they leave. And we're kind of leaning in that direction for the community room this time. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon from Ludmila. What is the reason that the south entrance will be closed? It really has to do with accessibility, I believe, and the adequacy of the entry to sort of function and accommodate everybody. It's still available for emergency egressing. I think the focus of the design was really to draw people into the north, the north side for accessibility reasons and just for functionality. Charles, you're exactly right. The intent of the architectural access board regulations here in Massachusetts is that the main entry be able to be used by everyone. So it really doesn't, doesn't the existing entry doesn't perform in the spirit of these accessibility regulations where only able bodied people can use that southern entry because it's, it's, it's got a half a flight of stairs so that's why we're proposing moving the entire entry to the north side. The other reason is that the north side is where the parking is. It just makes it much more easily accessed. If you're in a car, even if you're in a, if you're riding a bicycle, there will be bike racks there as well. So we're bringing Mary and Mary, if you want to ask your question on mute and go ahead please. Hi, Mary Sarah from North Amherst and I agree with Meg on the COVID roll out of vaccines I'm really proud of Amherst the way we've handled it. About the library I also agree with Meg, but I wanted to know what the timeline would be on starting on it and if you have some hope of when it will, you know, actually be open because I love I love the plans I think they really address pretty much all the, all the interest we had in North Amherst. So thank you. Do you want me to run that down Chris? Sure. Okay, so we're just submitting the permit documents tomorrow to the town for site plan review. We're working on demolition delay of submission requirements we have requirements submission requirements for the conservation commission walls design review. So there's a two to three months period of permitting right now when the project sort of going through the town departments and boards. Once, once the project is completely permitted, we'll, we'll move into design development where we take the conceptual idea, develop it further add more detail, you know, sort of really get integration of structural systems together in the building and we'll get another cost estimate at that point. Then we'll move into construction documents through the summer and so the anticipation and the hope is that if everything goes smoothly and permitting is fine and cost estimates are all working the way that way we expect them to, we should be able to start construction. We had during September and start construction around the end of September beginning of October. So, kind of like an early midfall construction date. In terms of how long a building like this could take to construct, I would, I would think nine months to a year probably would be the time frame for construction. Just jump on that. So, yeah, so we have, we have, we have had a very generous anonymous donor who's given us money to get us to construction documents and at that point we don't have funds moving forward but we've been led that anonymous donor has sort of indicated that they're interested in seeing this project through to completion so that's very, very exciting to us. I think you're right. This is a nice little positive thing in this in this dark age of coven to see this project moving forward. It is a town project so therefore it has to we have to follow our procurement are permitting everything. And, and I also just want to know what we what we have folks here that we do have a, I have an advisory committee that has Guilford on it. Sharon Sherry that library director. Alex Lefebvre, who is a library trustee, Molly Turner who is a former library trustee and Laura Fitch who's who I see here today who is also an architect in North Amherst and there's a, they've had one meeting. We get more and more through the permitting process and start to talk about some of those nitty gritty details. They will become more involved as we sort of grapple with some of these things. So, I have kudos for the design team Sarah says very nice design and so glad the community room can be used after hours so thank you Sarah for your positive comment. We also had someone write in and ask will this project have to be a net zero building. So, Chris do you want to talk about this and sure more detail thanks. Yeah. So, we, we're approaching this so that this is net zero ready. We are designing and detailing it to have a robust envelope exterior walls roof and floor. All of the systems will be electric. The existing oil fired hot air furnace is going to be removed, and we're going to air to air heat pumps for heating and cooling of the building. The lighting will be LED lighting, which is low energy lighting. The, there isn't currently a photovoltaic component to the project. We don't have PV panels on site, but the, but the addition itself will be ready to receive that and I believe that we would get very close to if not meet the zero net energy, once PV panels are hooked up. I will say also it's my understanding that they're because of the size of this project there isn't a requirement that it be zero net energy. I don't know Paul if you if you or Guilford you want to speak to that. I think that that's the side, the value of the project is below what would normally trigger that. But with all of our construction projects we're moving toward it we want you know it is a goal of the council to move towards as much net zero as we can so we are implementing that. There's some limitations in terms of where do you generate electricity on site on this location and that's the challenge for this site. Right. You're muted Angela. Sorry we've just promoted Mary to a panelist and she's coming back in to ask her question. It looks like Mary is muted as well. Mary do you have a question. Sorry, go ahead. This is her husband Bruce Coldham. I'm sitting in, and I've been watching the progress of this project all the way along. A few comments, starting with Chris, Chuck, this is a wonderful piece of work. And I guess that extends to Guilford and Paul and the town as well because I've learned over my career that you don't get good projects by just having good design teams or good constructors you have to have a good clan as well and this seems to be the full Monty here so I'm going to cut us to all on that. Secondly, I really want to support the observation or the request that Meg made about thinking through the, the functionality of the community space. After hours with a way to lighten the load of the town, I was going to make some commentary about it extending down all the way to door hardware and things like that which would be part of the architectural and design teams. So he thought fine grain stuff. I wondered, I don't have a solution to this but I wondered whether the same sort of thinking could go to some way to facilitate self maintenance so that I know, for example, the we in this north end of town have been using the pioneer common house, which is offered a similar possibilities but it's constrained in all sorts of ways but I know that that the community has become quite well disciplined to cleaning up after them and so if there could be some thought given to how maintenance could be devolved to the user in a way that would be reliably executed. I don't know what the architectural implications of this but I guess they may be some, and this makes it. Let's try to think about them before rather than after if we can. Finally, so far as the solar potential of the site is concerned. My guess is that it would be standalone panels if they were to be on the north side. It would be a wonderful solar aperture on the north side, but that would mean that suitable conduit would probably best be run out a few feet from the building to facilitate that more readily even when that resource was harnessed. Thank you. So we have just a few minutes left and I know Sarah McKee has her hand up so Sarah come on in and ask your question. Hi, am I on needed now. You are. Oh great. Since the lift is going to go down to the basement. Oh, I, I love the design. I just have not seen it and I just went with delight when it first. The angles are right the spirit is right. I really like it. The lift, since it's going down to the basement, which is now used for storage. Does that mean that potentially the lower level could also be used as public library space. Chris, do we have enough headroom down there. It is a low headroom space and that would sort of be the one determining factor on that I think. I mean, the, the, the directive that we got was that the basement would be used just for storage and would only be accessible by library staff. I don't know, Guilford or Paul, you are you in a position to address that question. Yes. The good it's a very good question. The reason the lift goes to the basement is so that in the future if you decide to do something in the basement, there's not a need for a major change. It's easier now to make sure the lift goes to all three levels. And that doesn't limit you in any way. But the plan right now by the library is so they don't have to increase staffing is to not use the basement for anything but storage right now. But we haven't restricted the future use if something happens where someone leaves a nice endowment to fund the person who wants to work there or something like that. That you could possibly change how you staff the library and then possibly have that for a room of some type. So that's the reason why the lift goes to all three levels. So I'm looking in the attendees and I don't see any more hands raised. We are almost at the 1230 limit. I just wanted to say thank you to everyone. And this has been really fun. And I've enjoyed hosting and seeing the design and again kudos for the team effort. So I look forward to our next community chat. I'm not quite sure what the topic is Paul do you have a preview for us. We know who it is but I don't remember who it is. Well thank you everyone and thanks to our community for showing up and stay healthy. Thanks everybody. Bye bye. Thank you everyone. Bye bye.