Renovations to the 229-year-old Greenfield Meetinghouse will be underway soon. (Photo by Jesseca Timmons)
Construction on the Greenfield Meetinghouse community center project will start as soon as the town has finalized the contract with Milestone Construction, the Select Board reported Thursday night.
“The construction manager is raring to go and can’t wait to get started,” said Select Board Chair Mason Parker. “We are just waiting to hear the final price from them and then we can sign the contract.”
In 2024, the Town of Greenfield received a $1 million CDFA Community Center Program Grant to complete renovations to the Meetinghouse basement community center and provide accessibility to the entire building. Preliminary work started in late fall, when the town prepared the site to connect the building to town sewer. Town sewer currently extends to the Greenfield Police Department, which is just across Francestown Road from the Meetinghouse.
The town has also completed work around the foundation of the building to repair the drainage issues which caused water damage to the basement in recent years.
At a recent meeting with Milestone Construction, the Select Board discussed final details of the plan, implementing some cost-cutting measures.
“The engineers suggested we get a 600 amp service, but we don’t need that for this project,” said Select Board member Mike Borden. “We could maybe lay a conduit for future use, but that is expensive, too.”
Renovations to the Meetinghouse include construction of an elevator which will provide access to three floors.
Town Administrator Aaron Patt said that all funds spent in the project must go toward completion of the basement-level community center, and that adding features for future use are not in the scope of the current project.
“Originally, with the plan for the entire building, we were thinking more about what we else we could do for the long term while we were working on the building, but these grant funds are only for the community center project,” Borden said. “Everything has to fit into this scope.”
Borden said that another minor change proposed by Milestone was to use pavers instead of a concrete slab, such as previously in place, at the entrance of the building.
“They are thinking water will get under that concrete slab like it did previously,” Borden said.
Improvements to the community room level include two accessible restrooms with doubled capacity, energy-efficient mini-split heating and cooling units and new LED lighting. The new floor plan will allow for use of the restrooms for upstairs events without intrusion into the community room.
Kitchen equipment, cabinets and countertops were recently cut from the plan at the most recent meeting with architects.
“That might be a great fundraising project for the Friends of the Meetinghouse,” Parker said.
Friends foot $90,000 bill for town
The Friends of the Greenfield Community Meetinghouse, which was formed in 2019 to raise funds for the renovations to the 229-year old Greenfield Meetinghouse, recently paid a $90,000 bill to architects Misiaszek Turpin for the completed architecture and engineering plan.
“This is what we have been fundraising for, and we are very happy to do it and for the project to finally break ground,” said FGCM Chair Sheldon Pennoyer.
Reporter Jesseca Timmons is secretary of the Friends of the Greenfield Community Meetinghouse.
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