Lakeville's Senior Center, Historical Society Have 60 Days to Draft Plan to Fund Move to Vacant Police Station

The Lakeville City Council had been waiting for a collaborative report from the and local before determining the city’s vacant police station’s fate.

The group received it on Monday evening during a lengthy work session but the report failed to sway council members into making a final decision.

The fate of the for the council as proposals to place the building, previously estimated to have a market value of $1.6 million, on the open market have been shot down.

Mayor Mark Bellows and council member Colleen Ratzlaff LaBeau have been in favor of “testing the market” to see what interest might be out there from developers and private entities. Meanwhile, the Lakeville Senior Center and historical society have been formulating a plan that would allow both entities to move into the vacant building to satisfy their growing needs and solve potentially expensive renovation issues should they remain in their current separate facilities.

Lakeville Area Historical Society President Wally Potter presented the council with a proposal for renovation costs, site plan and survey results from senior center members which the council had agreed to hear before making a decision. The organizations began looking into the possible move in January with a nod from the council.

In the proposed plan, the building would become a shared-use facility with approximately 17,500 square feet available. The organizations’ current facilities have an approximate combined 8,500 square feet of space. The proposed plans also allowed room for a possible expansion that could add as much as 5,000 square feet to the facility.

A glaring hole in the proposed plan was a roughly $300,000 shortfall in funding for the renovations needed to make the vacant police station suitable for use. The total cost for the renovations, including demolition of the current historical society building, was estimated at $1,120,000.

Potential funding sources included a $377,000 allocation in the city’s current building fund, $345,000 from the sale of the current senior center building and a $100,000 commitment from the senior center itself.

That left an estimated $298,000 shortfall that had council members uneasy as to how the difference would be made up.

“I can’t support any more tax increases to do this,” said council member Kerrin Swecker. “I’m a little nervous about the three-hundred thousand.”

An increase in current membership fees for the approximate 1,000 senior center members was mentioned as a way to help offset the gap, as was an aggressive fund-raising effort from the community as a whole.

Past fund-raising efforts similarly priced community projects such as the Veterans’ Memorial and the Miracle Field have taken from 2.5 years to 4 years to achieve their goals according to park and recreation director Steve Michaud. But ultimately, those efforts proved successful.

“I’m not as concerned about getting it funded,” said Swecker. “I don’t want to hang on to two buildings. One needs to go.”

Another factor considered by the council was that the proposal would increase the annual operating costs by $34,000 if approved versus the current operating costs for all three buildings in play as part of the process. It was assumed that the increased membership fees would need to be allocated for those costs leaving community fund-raising efforts to fully cover the renovation costs absent some type of grant.

As part of the process, organization representatives also conducted a telephone survey of approximately 200 senior center members to gauge interest in the move. Results showed that more than 80 percent of those members were supportive of a joint move but those numbers dropped by half or more when asked how willing members would be to become actively involved in fundraising or remodeling efforts to help lower costs.

Those results also made some council members take a harder look at the proposal.

“The survey doesn’t tell me whole lot from 200 people,” said LaBeau. “If the community is for it, great, then I’m for it. But what about the value of that building there that we’ve just given away? To me it’s not just about the (increased operational expense) or renovation cost, it’s about the value of the current building, too.”

While the $1.6 million estimate of the police station’s market value is accepted to be high and outdated due to the current economic climate, LaBeau believes there is still significant value there that the city can potentially leverage as an asset, and that option also needs to be explored.

Bellows, who has been a vocal opponent to the plan saying he feels the building would be inadequate for the organizations’ long-term needs, said he would prefer an out-of-the-box approach to solving the problem. There’s no question that the current facilities are inadequate as well, but Bellows doesn’t think the police station is the answer either.

“I think we need a paradigm shift,” said Bellows. “To have nine thousand (eligible seniors) and we have a building that can hold two hundred people doesn’t seem very visionary. I would challenge all of you to think bigger on what senior recreational opportunities could look like.”

Bellows said utilizing multiple locations such as churches and other meeting centers would help more seniors gain access to opportunities and programs. But that proposal met with resistance from senior center representatives that said a centralized gathering place helped provide the sense of community that seniors are looking for.

“I want to know what can be raised and what can be done,” said Swecker of the current proposal. “I’m all for it if we can make it work, but we have a timing issue and cost issue to consider as well.”

The council agreed to hold off on any further action for 60 days to give the organizations a chance to return with more convincing plans on how the $300,000 would be raised as well as a clearer time frame as to when it could be raised.

“If the community can support three hundred thousand and it may take two, three, five years, we need to know,” said Swecker. “I want to get one of these buildings sold.”