NEWBURYPORT — The mayor is giving the City Council three proposals for a new home for Newburyport Youth Services but at least two councilors are not so sure they will fly.
Youth Services was left without a permanent home after the heating equipment at the former Brown School was deemed unusable last fall.
The city purchased the former National Guard building at 59 Low St. for $220,000 to serve as the new home for Youth Services last winter and $30,000 was earmarked for local architectural firm EGA Architects to draft a conceptual design and cost estimate.
Mayor Sean Reardon is expected to present his plans for 59 Low St. to the City Council on Tuesday night.
The mayor proposes three plans for the building, with the first two calling for the construction of an additional, interconnected building that would house a gym.
The first plan would include a 4,040-square-foot gymnasium, 456-square-foot lobby, dedicated preschool area, teen hangout, study area, art room, administrative offices, multipurpose room and 23 parking spaces at an estimated cost of $8 million.
The second plan would cost an estimated $5.7 million and include most of what the first plan proposes with a smaller connector between the two buildings. Two offices would be created in the teen hangout and a restroom would be shared between the preschool and the staff.
The mayor’s third plan does not call for an additional building to be constructed and would cost an estimated $2.9 million.
The third plan would also provide a vestibule entranceway, multipurpose room, teen hangout area, art room, study room, preschool area, administrative offices and 23 parking spaces, with the potential for building a gymnasium in a new building in the future.
The first two plans are larger with more connected spaces for middle and high school aged youths while providing five programming spaces and cooking space, allowing for 30% more participation.
The first two options would utilize more of the current building and its lobby space while providing larger, more efficient administrative offices. The third option would not meet Youth Services’ programming needs.
The three plans would all receive $600,000 in Kelley School sale proceeds. While the first plan would require a $7.5 million, 30-year bond, the second plan would need $5.1 million, while the third plan would require $2.4 million with no gymnasium; $3.7 million with a gymnasium and $4.1 million with a phased-in gymnasium.
Reardon has been showing his proposals to city councilors but at-large Councilor Mark Wright said he is not sure about the feasibility of the plans.
“If you look at furthering the deck, you’d say they have eliminated the third option because it doesn’t meet the programming needs, so that is a red herring anyways,” he said. “I wasn’t expecting it to be a negligible amount of money to provide what is needed, but I don’t know how we get to eight votes on options 1 and 2.”
Wright added that he is looking forward to speaking to fellow councilors about the project Tuesday.
“There’s a lot of questions to be answered and it will take a lot of convincing for me to approve a bond amount,” he said. “We have already bonded a ton of things, including the new West End fire station, and I don’t know where we can continue to bond all these projects. It may come down to the mayor losing support and taking it to the voters as a Proposition 2½ override if the council doesn’t support the expenditure.”
Ward 5 Councilor Jim McCauley said he found the three plans to be very creative but also pointed out that they are only at the 8% design phase, which he said is too early for a bond proposal.
“I’m not a fan of the accompanying bond order because it is just too early,” he added. “We’re at 8% design and we don’t do that traditionally until we are at 75% plus. I also know that people are excited about it but if we voted on it tomorrow, it would take a minimum of three years to get it permitted, funded, designed, bid and built.”
McCauley added that he intends to make a motion to remove the bond order from the plans at the meeting Tuesday.
“This is just too soon,” he said.
Staff writer Jim Sullivan covers Newburyport for The Daily News. He can be reached via email at jsullivan@newburyportnews.com or by phone at 978-961-3145. Follow him on Twitter @ndnsully.
