Town Of Dover Community Center Building Committee Updates For February 19

Press release from the Town of Dover:

February 19, 2021

At their February 15, 2021 meeting the Dover Community Center Building Committee unanimously voted to move forward to the Schematic Design the “Save the 1910” (partial renovation, partial new construction plan), and the “Two Story” (entirely new build plan). These two options will be presented at a tentatively planned June special Town Meeting.

These decisions were supported by two recent community surveys completed by Dover citizens. At a February 8 community forum, after the Building Committee’s presentation and discussion, an online survey was conducted, 86% of the attendees supported the “Save the 1910” Renovation plans and 82% supported the “Two Story” New Building plan. The Building Committee also sent out the same survey on social media and the Town of Dover website. This generated 147 respondents with 117 supporting the “Save the 1910” and 134 supporting the New “Two Story”.

This completed a 5-month study where the Committee reviewed previous studies, with particular emphasis on the 2019 Project Committee research which looked at what 12 other neighboring communities do and have for their communities. The Committee focused on programming options to be considered in future designs and developed a Feasibility study looking at space sizes to accommodate flexible rooms for different types of activities. They also developed conceptual designs which included rooms for fitness, recreation, community, social, activities, offices for Park & Recreation and the Council on Aging, storage and other considerations. The Committee demonstrated the daily lifecycle of demographic age use of a community center, to illustrate the flexibility of the designs. This was all done listening to the citizens ideas and concerns through three Citizen forums and surveys. Over 175 citizens participated with citizen and committee consensus driving the process.

The Building Committee now turns to the architect creating the schematic design for the two options and pricing by two independent firms. The Committee is planning for two more citizen forums prior to a planned June 2021 special Town Meeting, these forums will continue to update the citizens on the developing designs and continue to provide opportunities for input and questions. At the special Town meeting voters will be asked to say YES to one of the two remaining options (with funding capped at $13m), to go to final construction documents and construction, with a projected completion date in 2023.

This press release was produced by the Town of Dover. The views expressed are the author's own.