Group Hopes to Get New Town Hall Soft Costs Funding at Nov. Town Meeting

If Foxborough is to build a new town hall, building new in the parking lot of the current site and not renovating or moving to the Payson Road is the way to go according to an update from the Town Hall Working Group.

Giving an update at Tuesday’s selectmen meeting, Selectman David Feldman said the group hopes to put out a request for proposals for the soft costs later this month or in early September. The soft costs include expense not related to the actual construction of the building, including the architectural costs.

“This is so we can move this to the next phase and then the drawing phase and be able to present to the voters real construction costs at a future town meeting in the fall of 2015 but we can’t do that unless we have funding to engage in architect to obtain those conceptual plans,” Feldmen said.

The price of the softs costs will be requested at this November’s special town meeting if the working group is able to stay on their current timeline.

Town Manager William Keegan mentioned the age of the building, the leaky roof as some of the reasons to build new but said he is open to looking at other options.

“While we don’t all universally agree on what the approach should be, we will move forward if there is a significant agreement on where we should go,” Keegan said. “We’re not comfortable with dismissing other options before we get to that point. We want to make sure that’s a defensible position.”

Payson Road was seen as a possible site for a new town hall but the working group noted in a report that the popularity and historical nature of the current South Street location would make a move across town unlikely.

If the town chooses to build new, the building will unlikely be the 17,000-square-foot project originally expected. The size of the building is expected to be in the 13,500-14,500-square-foot range. With the basement not being occupied, 6,700-square-feet of town hall is being used.

“Literally people are on top of each other,” Keegan said.

As an example of what the costs may be, Feldmen told the board that the 20,000-square-foot town hall in Dracut was build for $9.3 million.

More updates from the working group are expected in the near future along with a Facebook page to allow for the public to comment on the group’s work.

To read the full report from the Town Hall Working Group, click here.