MONTPELIER – The Burlington architectural firm of Freeman French Freeman has won a landmark contract to help the state decide the future of its historic but flood-damaged Waterbury State Office Complex.
Freeman French Freeman will partner with the Boston architectural firm Goody Clancy, which has extensive experience in sustainable preservation projects, and seven other consulting firms, according to a copy of the extensive bid document.
The combined “technical proposal” sets out a very ambitious eight week timeline that will provide the state with recommendations on what to do with the complex and provide a series of cost estimates. According to the plan, three concurrent groups will look at three options: return and full re-use of Waterbury, multi-use with state and possible private ownership, and new off-site buildings to house state workers.
It also proposes extensive reviews of a number of critical issues such as flood mitigation, central energy plan options, and economic evaluations. The plan makes it clear, as the state requested, that hybrid options are not ruled out.
Because some financial details on the contract have not been finalized, Wanda Minoli, principal assistant to Commissioner of Buildings and General Services Michael Obuchowski, said Wednesday the cost of the bid proposal was not available yet.
The decision on the future of the 700,000 square foot complex, which housed some 1,500 state employees and the Vermont State Hospital, is considered one of the largest and most consequential projects ever undertaken by the state.
Parts of the red brick complex, with its elegant turreted buildings, date back to before 1900, but many of the buildings are antiquated and all of the infrastructure sustained damage when tropical storm Irene sent the nearby Winooski River over its banks and streaming into the first floors of most of the structures on Aug. 28.
Beyond its historic character, the complex’s future is of enormous importance for the community of Waterbury located 11 miles north of the capital, whose economic base took a devastating hit with the dispersal of around 1,200 state employees to replacement work sites for an estimated two years.
The state had received 12 bids for the feasibility study and eventually certified 10 as meeting its criteria in December. Six members of the Department of Buildings and General Services, which oversee the bid process, reviewed and numerically rated the bids, Minoli said. The team presented Obuchowski with its recommendation and he has agreed and signed off on it, she said.
Minoli in December told lawmakers that due to the scope of the project and its many moving parts – economic, engineering, flood prevention, historic preservation – that the state might hire several firms. But Obuchowski said Wednesday the extensive proposal by Freeman French Freeman and Goody Clancy “best met the RFP criteria.”
Founded in 1937, Freeman French Freeman is the state’s oldest architectural firm and has 19 staffers. Goody Clancy has 75 employees and offices in Boston and Washington. Both firms have a long history of architectural and historic preservation work in Vermont and New England.
Freeman French Freeman has done projects at Norwich University and Middlebury College, designed the recent James M. Jeffords Life Sciences building at the University of Vermont, the McFarland state office building in Barre, the renovation of the Burlington International Airport and is currently working on plans for reuse of the Moran heating plant in Burlington. It also won an award for its recent restoration of the Mary Fletcher House on the Fletcher Allen Health Care campus in Burlington.
Goody Clancy recently completed the Roger H. Perry Welcome Center at Champlain College and has worked on such highly visible projects as restoration of historic Trinity Church in Boston and a $45 million exterior restoration of the 1798 State House in Massachusetts.
Good Clancy actually has experience with a reuse and redesign project very similar to Waterbury in Cranston, R.I., where it worked to preserve and renovate the historic 1890 buildings in a former almshouse and state hospital. It also has done planning on the historic Richardson Olmsted Complex in Buffalo, N.Y., designed in 1870 as an insane asylum.
The breadth of expertise listed in the bid document covers all of the prominent issues that have been raised by state officials in exploring their options in Waterbury. These include floodwater and storm water management, flood proofing, traffic, biomass and solar and heat pump heating systems, heating and plumbing rehab of historic buildings, environmental sustainability and energy conservation, mixed-use designs and economic analysis.
The proposal says the speed of the feasibility is “a challenge” but said the concentrated effort should create “an energetic cross-fertilization of ideas that congeal quickly into options.”
State officials have stressed that while Irene was a disaster, it also provides an opportunity to completely rethink how the state groups and houses workers, creating new workplaces that co-locate relevant agencies together and providing space that will be suitable and adaptable for decades to come for 21st century technology and work.
Locations in Barre and in Montpelier are also being explored in the state’s wide-ranging review of buildings, state land and existing workspaces and are included in the scope of the feasibility study.
Secretary of Administration Jeb Spaulding in December estimated the state may spend anywhere from $65 million to $85 million if it restores the Waterbury complex. The state has already sunk more than $20 million into renovations at the office complex to bring back basic services such as power and heating. How much of that work is likely to be reimbursed by FEMA and insurance is uncertain.
Minoli said members of the consortium of firms were at Waterbury on Wednesday already touring the structures. The proposal indicates that nine staffers from the firms will be working fulltime on the project during the next eight weeks.
Jesse Beck, president of Freeman French Freeman, did not return calls for comment.
