ORDER-2020-69 : Authorizing a Bond in the Amount of $2,311,205 for building repairs to Memorial Hall.

Transcript (~35 min @ 44:56)

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▶ 44:59 Christopher Cinella: yes 11 yes we have a full agenda tonight and you know I want to make sure that everybody gets a chance to speak we also have a budget season approaching and just wanted to remind everybody on rule 13 within rule 13 it says no member shall occupy more than five minutes in total while speaking on any question by this debate on Monday obviously two chances to go total of ten minutes So if you could please just keep an eye on the time within the 10 minutes.

▶ 45:32 Christopher Cinella: The first order this evening before us is order 2020-69, authorizing a bond in the amount of $2,311,205 from building repairs to Memorial Hall. At this time, I'll entertain a motion to suspend the rules.

▶ 45:54 Christopher Cinella: I believe we have a motion to suspend the rules by Councillor McNaught, seconded by Consular Eccles. Madam Clerk, call the roll. Vice Chair Migliorelli? Yes.

▶ 46:03 Speaker 1: Councilor Tramontozzi? Yes. Councilor McMaster? Yes. Councilor McNaught? Yes. Councilor Eccles? Yes. Councilor Garipay? Yes. Councilor Stewart? Yes. Councilor Thomas? Yes. Councilor Jamaleddine? Yes. President Grigoraitis? Yes. Chair Cinella? Yes. 11 yes I'm gonna make Denise Gaffey a panelist at this time she is Denise can

▶ 46:43 Speaker 1: you hear us I can can you hear me you can and we can see you fantastic

▶ 46:46 Christopher Cinella: Denise thank you for coming this evening welcome like to kick us off absolutely

▶ 46:52 Denise Gaffey: um so I'm pleased to be here tonight and to speak about the order in front of you regarding the bond request from memorial hall um that funding request comes out of a study that was performed in 2019 and um and was completed and resulted in a report dated november 18 2019 which i believe was attached to the order and i hope you've all had a chance to review it um The project itself was initiated by an earmark grant that the city received back in early 2019. We received an earmark, and I was asked to assist Kathy Pickett-Broder with the implementation of this project. The earmark itself was generally focused on restoration work at Memorial Hall. so my first order was the my first step was to meet with Kathy and with the Board of Trustees and just to confirm how they what they thought was the most important important way to spend that money and most important project is that water infiltration is a critical concern in the building so so I expected that they would agree that performing a feasibility study or on building envelope study would be the highest priority so that is what I went and embarked on I hired an engineering company who specializes in this type of work Russo bar associates and proceeded to work with them over several months to the course of 2019 they came out to the building on many occasions that did a very thorough review I think you would agree based on the study they did a pretty thorough review of all of the the exterior elements of the building put together this this cost estimate of what restore or make the building weather tight and we're talking about flashing masonry repointing and window restoration those are sort of the key elements to the scope and the study was completed in November it was it was presented to the Board of Trustees in November of 2018 2019 and it was also it became part of the capital improvement program which was ongoing at that time we were doing a comprehensive process citywide as many of you are aware looking at all of the city's capital needs and Memorial Hall and this particular project was viewed as a very very important priority project by the CIP committee and ranked ranked very highly and that was one of the top ten projects so that's that's that's sort of how we got to where we are today I think Mayor Broder agreed that it was important to take this take the initiative to to implement these repairs at this time and obviously it would be the most prudent thing to do to seal up the exterior of the building before any further investment is made in the interior and and there's quite a bit of need in the interior as well so it makes sense to do this project first and I think that's pretty much my overview I'm I'm happy to answer any questions that you have.

▶ 50:40 Speaker 6: Councilor Garipay.

▶ 50:44 Mark Garipay: Yes, thank you. Thank you, Ms. Gaffney for being here. Just have a couple of questions. If this is approved tonight, when would it go out to bid? When do you think the project would start and would it be completed by the winter?

▶ 51:02 Denise Gaffey: I'm not exactly sure when, how long the completion date will take, to be honest with you. have to there are a few steps I need to take you know I would have first I would have sit with the Board of Trustees and just talk through a schedule that works with with their with the events that are planned there I mean we're in a funny place right now obviously because the building you know and that could work to our advantage because currently the building is closed and so I think I think my interest would be to start it right away and try to move as quickly as as we can to try to take advantage of the fact that this currently, most of the programming has been suspended. So that would be my intention, would be to meet with the trustees, lay out a schedule. We would have to, there are a couple of things we'd have to do. We would have to go through a selection process to hire an engineer and a preservation architect. That would be the first step. and then to fully develop the design plans and develop construction documents in order to take this out to bid. So it's quite a few steps ahead.

▶ 52:16 Speaker 3: I don't, I think it would be somewhat ambitious to try to complete this by the end of this year.

▶ 52:24 Mark Garipay: Okay. With regards to, we received a couple emails regarding the historical district commission and is this project have to go in front of the Historical District Commission? And would that be on, would we get that on the docket so that starts moving? Can we work on that both together if that is the process?

▶ 52:47 Denise Gaffey: Yeah, so the building itself is in the Historic District, so correct, it would require a certificate of appropriateness from the Historic District Commission. We would not go in front of the commission until we had developed plans. I mean they want they want to see exactly what the exterior modifications and measures are going to be and so so that's we couldn't we couldn't do that right away. Nor would that be of any service to anybody, but that would be built into the process into the design phase as well for sure. there's also the building itself is on the national register and there's a preservation restriction on the building. So, we would be consulting with Mass Historic Commission. They are required to review the plans and, and as part of that consultation, we generally, we generally, they generally loop in the local historical commission. I did, I did see an email that was sent earlier to the board about that question, and I was a little, I was a little surprised by that, and frankly a little bothered, but that, that the Commission, or at least the Chair of Commission, would initiate a correspondence with Mass Historic right now because it's very premature. We don't even have the funding in place. So I mean, I, I don't know, it kind of gives the impression that we may not know that we need to put that we have a preservation restriction on this building and that's certainly not the case I've managed for at least four projects on this building over the last 20 years and I'm well aware of the preservation restriction on the building always consulted with Mass Historical Commission and so I would just say it's you know too early in the process to do that now and you know I I just kind of question why that outreach was taken at this point, especially when there are members of the commission who are well aware that we've worked with them in the past to consult on projects.

▶ 54:52 Mark Garipay: I did notice on the bid, it's got 1.807205 and the appropriation is 2.311205, 2.3, 1.1, and 2.0.5, a difference of about $504,000. Is that just a contingency, or can you just tell us a little bit about the difference?

▶ 55:14 Denise Gaffey: Yeah, those are soft costs that are not built into the construction costs. The construction estimate, the estimate in the document, the study, is just for construction. If you read the narrative, there is some mention, and I think there's even an asterisk on the estimate itself, But there is some mention of the fact that the estimate here does not include soft costs, which are further design, project management. We would have to hire a project manager. We're actually obligated by statute because of the dollar amount to hire a project manager, which I think is a good thing to do anyway. but we have you know obviously design project management and in other contingency escalation cost so I think there we have factored in about 25% or for that which is which is sort of the industry standard at this stage since this is a very rough and early estimate feasibility estimate

▶ 56:16 Speaker 1: is is quite preliminary um counselor um Garipay i'm sorry to interrupt you i believe the mayor's in queue uh questions as well i don't mean to interrupt your flow i'm just going to bring him in just to be startled by the adding him as a panelist i'm going to finish up memorial hall

▶ 56:26 Mark Garipay: to me it's a major piece of fabric in our community i believe it is an integral part of the business community uh drawing people downtown who patronize our local shops and businesses unfortunately due to the financial constraints over the years the upkeep on the building has been neglected by allowing the deterioration deterioration of this building to continue the potential damage caused inside i feel may not be repairable so i believe starting this process by starting this process we'll be able to get the uh get it to the point where we we have provided the product for Kathy Piccobrota to be able to make this building self-sustainable. We've not been able to do that. I think we owe it to Kathy to be able to give her a product that she can make this building self-sustainable so it doesn't continue to drain on our budget. So I'll be supporting this order.

▶ 57:34 Speaker 6: Thank you. Mayor Broder.

▶ 57:40 Paul Brodeur: Hello again, everyone. I very much appreciate the time. I really can't say it better than the folks with, obviously I disagree with what Mr. Moreau said, but I appreciate the comments of the others supporting both the thoughtfulness of the process, the fact that engineers have been consulted, and in particular the value and the symbolism, all of which is so important to our community to our veterans community in particular into our economy it's been said already but memorial hall really is the anchor of our downtown and we can never forget that and we have to take i think a long view as to regarding the importance of that and this is an investment that i am confident um will pay off when i think of some of the things that have gone on there. We know about our premier tenant, the Melrose Symphony, many school events, wrestling, both pro and amateur has been housed at Memorial Hall, boxing, intergenerational prom, you name it. It really is from a place that when I was a kid was definitely something of an afterthought and not particularly aggressively used, has really grown into something that it is our obligation to maintain and um it's important to me it's important to the community everyone has their story uh about memorial hall i i think in particular about um after 9 11 it's where the the community gathered i mean i was i was not home i was stuck out um and took a bit to get home uh but that was knowing that that was the place i knew that folks were going there and gathering there um that's an incredible thing and the idea that it's something unique to our community that we can preserve and enhance uh is is very very important for all of us i think so i appreciate the support um i also want to note that um if i can pull it up here um the president of the the symphony was in the queue, but missed her opportunity to speak for whatever reason. She did shoot me an email asking me to pass along that Mona Symphony is honored to be the orchestra in residence for 102 years at Memorial Hall, and that we support all efforts to maintain this historic treasure, that they very much look forward to performing again soon and well into the future at Memorial Hall, as they are so much identified with Memorial Hall. did want to make sure that folks know knew that that they were stepping forward with their support

▶ 1:00:27 Christopher Cinella: thank you all again very much thank you mayor brother did i miss anybody uh councillor mcnaught

▶ 1:00:34 Jeff McNaught: thank you mr chairman thank you for being here tonight miss gaffey and thank you mayor broder for your words as well um i'll be brief i will um essentially say that i agree with what catholic arapa said at the end in his summation um i think it's time that we we get memorial hall to a place um where we're proud to bring people in there and i and i say that very delicately because i know how proud we all are of memorial hall and we understand its historic significance um we've heard the public speak here tonight and i know i haven't been on the council very long but i've never seen a flurry of emails like we got to support this order especially over today it took a long time to get through them but the wide array of businesses that rent memorial hall and bring so much uh business and and a vibrant atmosphere to downtown melrose is astonishing from dance recitals to as the mayor said boxing matches to weddings to i'm there a few times a year and i can't even remember why but every time i go in i think it's got to be really nice to fix this place up so um i am in support of fixing the envelope um and in doing it with professional uh opinions i do understand it's a significant amount of money um during a time period where where things uh are a little shaky but uh i believe that we can handle it i would uh raise one thing that mr moreau has said and i'm sure it's across many of our minds and that is preventative maintenance i don't mention this just for memorial hall i i mention it for any real project that we're going to take on um for buildings within the city so i guess um that would be just it's not a uh put you on the spot question miss gaffney for for um memorial hall so to speak but can we begin to build in preventative maintenance plans with projects like this and is it possible to do something generally so that we can build something in from memorial hall and all projects going

▶ 1:02:53 Denise Gaffey: forward i i um i share your concern about that i think it's a very legitimate um extremely legitimate comment and i think that is something we can be more mindful of when we're doing this project i mean obviously we always have um warranties with our work but um we could um maybe you know we may be in the in the position if the budget warrants to maybe beef up our warranties and allow for some extra scrutiny and review um building it in you know for years after um but i do think i think we can certainly put together um more explicit types of instructions on how to maintain the work that gets done i think that's um i think that's an excellent idea

▶ 1:03:40 Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you. That's all I had.

▶ 1:03:46 Cory Thomas: Also Thomas. Thank you, Mr. Chairperson. Thank you, Miss Gaffey for being here. Mayor Broder, thank you for being here. Russo Bar and Associates, they did a great job with this survey. Will you take the scope of this survey and then put this out to bid to other contractors?

▶ 1:04:04 Denise Gaffey: I'm afraid I can't do that by by statute I have to hire I have to use the designer section law to hire an engineer this scope of work was was did not exceed the threshold for for that process so I was able to I was able to hire Russo bar by contacting three different firms and getting you know putting out a written scope but um and they ended up being fantastic so I'm certainly hoping they will bid on it and they'll be very competitive if they do but but I have to do I do have to do a selection process and I mean it's part of that process too it is it's now a more expensive project we would have them team the engineer would probably be the lead because of well you know actually I have to think about it most likely the engineer would be a lead but we would have a preservation architect as part of the team also which is how we we approached the HVAC project that we did 10 years ago and other projects. So there'll be more members to the team than just the envelope engineer.

▶ 1:05:10 Cory Thomas: And as Councilor Garipay noted, there is about $600,000 or $700,000 in soft money as you called it. Would that historical architect be part of that soft money?

▶ 1:05:20 Speaker 3: Yeah, that's gonna be built into the designer's fee, which is part of the soft costs.

▶ 1:05:26 Cory Thomas: if russo and barr did not bid this project think of their other area engineers that could take this

▶ 1:05:34 Denise Gaffey: on i i think it's a pretty exciting project so yeah i do i mean i'm a little yeah i have to say i'm not you know i'm i'm a little unclear what the climate is right like right now with with coven 19 but i i believe there'll be i nonetheless i mean i think there'll be a lot of interest in

▶ 1:05:52 Cory Thomas: this project and like like councilman mcnaught said um you know i haven't been on the board long either but you know there was a flurry of you know dozens of um people in favor of this reaching out via email um i wanted to thank um veterans eric donato and scott forbes for speaking tonight in favor of memorial hall um it is a huge part of our community you know as a life lifelong melrosean i've seen firsthand that memorial hall is part of the fabric of melrose As a child, I took part in an annual Halloween parade inside the Memorial Hall back in the day, in the late 70s and early 80s. I've seen my kids, you know, go through their moving on ceremonies at Memorial Hall for fifth grade. I've seen the state champion Melrose High School wrestling team wrestle in the brawl in the hall against Wakefield the last few years. But Memorial Hall is in need of repairs, renovation, modernization. updates and repairs to the exterior of the building will allow like you said to get into the interior of memorial hall the interior memorial hall do we have any ideas of what the costs may be to improve the interior including the garden i have not been involved in any assessments

▶ 1:07:05 Denise Gaffey: at this stage for that i know that the friends group has been very actively trying to fundraise that's part of their goal is to to fundraise for some of the some of the interior work

▶ 1:07:20 Cory Thomas: no i definitely think uh an investment in memorial hall is an investment in our community so i will be voting in favor of this as well thank you counselor eccles thank you miss gaffey and

▶ 1:07:34 Jack Eccles: mayor for being here tonight um so a few of my questions that have to do with kind of like a long-term plan for for renovating the interior of memorial hall but counselor thomas asked it seems like those discussions haven't quite yet started is that right well i just i i was agreeing with

▶ 1:07:53 Denise Gaffey: him that i think they're that's really important that that becomes a priority that we have those discussions and that we would try to build um build into the project we would certainly end up at the end of the project we can end up with a robust sort of set of instructions on maintenance but i think the city also just needs to make sure you know the staff is in place to follow through

▶ 1:08:16 Jack Eccles: on those mm-hmm yeah I think that the most compelling reason for moving this forward personally is that it's not prudent to spend any money on the interior until we can we can fix up the exterior and then I just have one more question is based on your experience and with the with the other projects he works with do you see anything that could be maybe a red flag as part of this project with the mass historic Commission or in any of the preservation groups as far as what could as an issue not at all i'm sure they're they're going to be really

▶ 1:08:50 Denise Gaffey: excited that the city i mean mass historical commission will be very excited that the city is making this investment no question about it they're all about preserving the building and that's that is the mission of this project and um no i mean i don't think we're we're not really proposing any radical um alterations either really i mean it's it's kind of like a maintenance project except it's you know it's more it's more than that I mean we'll I think but there's not a lot that's going to be controversial I guess I'll just put it that way I can't imagine there's anything all that controversial I think the you know we were doing the HVAC projects in 2008 that was a little bit more that was was a very sensitive project was we were putting events in to the interior and we had to be very considerate about we were replacing them and making them as you know not as obtrusive as we could and I don't see quite the same level of concern about these exterior repairs but but um you

▶ 1:10:01 Paul Brodeur: know certainly we'll process mr. chairman if I may so obviously miss Cathy has more experience than just about anyone perhaps and they treat the building in certain respects given the number of projects that have gone there and that I back in the day I was an attorney in the Secretary of State's office not working directly with Mass Historic but on occasion having to interact with them for various reasons the same is true with various things that during that time I was state representative and my sense of them is absolutely that they get excited about projects like this that that communities are looking to preserve and protect these kind of resources. I can tell you, if we spoke to them way back in the day when, quite frankly, the city was considering closing or severely limiting activity at Memorial Hall, they would have been very disappointed. They like to see this kind of effort, and I expect we will certainly, as we have in the past, before my administration, work closely with them to make sure we're doing the right thing, because in this case the right thing is also the most productive thing for the

▶ 1:11:16 Jack Eccles: hall and the best thing for the community fantastic thank you so much I'm I'm excited to echo my previous councillors and many of the people who wrote to us and spoke a public comment and plan to support this work thank you

▶ 1:11:32 Denise Gaffey: chair Migliorelli thank you chairman thank you miss Gaffey for being here tonight I had a question sort of piggybacking off of what councillor IRPA asked about timing so it's a little bit different now and that we're not having events in Memorial Hall but if we were what how would this impact events and as you could you speak a little bit more to how potentially we could take advantage of this time not having events I mean you know we don't want to think about the worst case scenario of how long that might that be but I'm just wondering if you could talk a little bit about that so yeah I think the fact that there are currently you know that the event schedule um is has been um sort of put aside for the time being is speaks to um our probably uh our interest in doing this or getting the project going right away i think if we can take advantage of that that's obviously better if we can um if if we're not having to work around events it's it's makes it just makes things a little bit easier i'm not um terribly concerned about this project and um working around events because most of the work is exterior and i don't and um i think it can be done i mean i think it's it would require coordination i mean we you know have done it before with other projects um in the building and i think you know it's just a matter of having constant communication with kathy and with the board of trustees and just making sure we're coordinating with them and mindful of their events um you know we would build certain events we we could build into the schedule that you know certain events if they had we couldn't be doing any work in the building during them i mean that can all be kind of laid out up front um but i think a lot of this work can be done without

▶ 1:13:31 Leila Migliorelli: major disruptions great thank you so much and i'll just echo what my other councillor said i was impressed by the number of emails that we've received in support of this project and um and i'll be voting and supporting it as well awesome mcmaster thank you mr chairman good evening miss

▶ 1:13:46 Shawn M. MacMaster: gaffey good evening mayor broder i had a question about the um the history of repairs over time uh primarily when is the last time that the city made a significant investment um on the outside

▶ 1:14:07 Denise Gaffey: of the building structurally speaking so um yeah the last the last major capital investment in the building that i was involved in was in 2008 but that was the hvac projects um that was in that was in um including air conditioning into the building for the first time and completely upgrading the heating system and um there were obviously some exterior elements associated with that but it wasn't sort of an envelope type project um and then it was there were a series of projects in the mid mid to late 90s that involved um exterior work that involved selective masonry it was if it was selective masonry pointing there wasn't budget to do like the whole building but selective portions and there were some windows that were selectively restored again not all the windows were restored um the roof was replaced in the in the late 90s so that has not lasted for as long as i would certainly like to to see to be honest with you um but not but the other projects were selective kind of selective restoration work and a couple of them were related to some or involved grant funding that the city obtained in the 90s from the mass preservation projects fund which is also out of the secretary of state's office i believe

▶ 1:15:31 Shawn M. MacMaster: um but they yeah thank you and the reason i ask that is i think it illuminates two things the first is the age of the building uh 1912 that's put in perspective that's the same year that fenway park was built and we know the number of the you know investments that have been made to the ballpark over the years both to the outside and to the inside so i think it does demonstrate the need to make improvements when we need to i think to mr moroz's point it also does demonstrate the um idea of having some sort of a building maintenance plan and i i did bring this up with respect to the fire apparatus same thing that when we make these investments when we vote on bond we we should be looking ahead to having these types of plans. So I am compelled to support this because I think it's needed. I would just like to see us to work on a plan proactively to mitigate the impacts that weather may have on the building over time and attempts of falling again in the future or major impacts that we might be able to address short of a major investment. The other question that I had is did it come up at all during this process that, and I heard Ms. Mongeau talk about the importance of having work done to the outside of the building so that it can begin to do the work as a group that it's looking to do internally to preserve the building. Has there been conversations about not doing this work potentially impacting our ability to host events at Memorial Hall and may impact our ability to generate revenue?

▶ 1:17:24 Denise Gaffey: I mean, I think anything I could say to that would be anecdotal, but I think certainly if you're in the GAR Hall, it's pretty apparent that there's been a lot of deterioration and it's really not putting, it doesn't reflect well on the building. And I think if you're renting space for good money and people have options, then they're going to consider other venues.

▶ 1:18:01 Speaker 3: I think it just makes sense.

▶ 1:18:03 Shawn M. MacMaster: And my final question is at one time, believe we had historical artifacts that were stored in the basement of the building. They're not in the climate controlled setting right now. My guess is they're still there. Is there any belief that they're no longer there? Because I think that's another consideration in terms of doing the work to the outside of the building is ensuring that those important historical artifacts are in a building where perhaps we can do the type of work internally to put them in a climate controlled environment unless there's some other plan for them unless they've already been removed but I'm not aware that yeah I'm sorry I

▶ 1:18:47 Denise Gaffey: don't know the answer to that question I'm not exactly sure where any types of artifacts like that are being stored thank you both thank you is there

▶ 1:19:00 Christopher Cinella: Anybody else that I missed? I don't think I saw anyone's hands go up. What is the will of the committee?

▶ 1:19:07 Speaker 4: Motion to recommend for passage.

▶ 1:19:11 Speaker 2: Second.

▶ 1:19:12 Christopher Cinella: Motion to recommend for passage to the full board by Councilor Eccles, seconded by Councilor Tramontozzi. Madam Clerk, could you please call the roll?

▶ 1:19:23 Speaker 3: Vice Chair Migliorelli. Yes.

▶ 1:19:24 Speaker 1: Councilor Tramontozzi. Yes. Councilor McMaster. Yes. Councilor McNaught.

▶ 1:19:36 Speaker 1: yes councillor eccles yes council Garipay yes councillor stewart yes councillor thomas yes

▶ 1:19:43 Speaker 1: councillor maladin yes president Grigoraitis yes chairman Eccles sanella yes 11 yes next up is our

▶ 1:19:52 Christopher Cinella: uh divided order 2020-70 which was an appropriation for 579 000 from free cash