To Marion Selectmen and Robert Raymond, chair Town House Building Committee:

As you know, the Town House Building Committee is holding a public forum on this coming Thursday to discuss options for a new town administrative building. The THBC has presented cost numbers, most recently, for options 1, 2, 4 and 5. The square footage assumptions range from 11,870 square feet to 17,133 square feet. Its base assumption for a new building at the VFW site is 14,261 square feet.

There reportedly are 18 town employees working at the Town House. Office building developers in the private sector typically assume 150-250 square feet per employee and 400 square feet per employee is considered extremely generous. The THBC’s base case for a building at the VFW site assumes 14,261 square feet, which works out to almost 800 square feet per employee.

A new town administrative building at the VFW site should be no more than 7,000 square feet (which assumes a generous 400 square feet per employee) and probably 5,000 square feet or less. The VFW site also provides a unique opportunity because of its proximity to the building owned by the town on Atlantis Drive. By taking advantage of available existing space at Atlantis Drive, a new building at the VFW site might not need to be even 5,000 square feet.

Whether building a new building at the VFW site or renovating the existing Town House, this project should not move ahead until the THBC quantifies within a very tight range how much space is actually required for a Marion town administrative building, given its required functions and number of employees. The THBC needs to ask the question: What functions have to be in the town administrative building and consider the availability of unutilized or underutilized space at the Music Hall, Sippican School, Atlantis Drive and the police station. As an example, Atlantis Drive could be used for record storage and the Harbormaster’s Office relocated to the police station. Until this is done, it is impossible to make fair comparison between the options.

The number of square feet should not be determined by what we happen to have now in the existing town building (apparently 17,133 square feet), or by what we conveniently end up with by eliminating the rear annex of the Town House (apparently 14,126 square feet). It should be based on a careful assessment of how much space is really needed for a town administrative building. As a next step, the THBC should come up with the number of square feet actually required and clear logical support for it. This should have been the first step of the process.

One of the advantages of building at the VFW site is that we, as a town, can “right size” the new building and likely save the town money in the process. The town built a new, approximately 10,090 square foot, police station. It is hard to understand why the police station needed to be so big. Let’s be prudent managers of our towns scare financial resources by right sizing our new town building or the renovation.

Sincerely,

John P. Waterman
Marion