SHUTESBURY — Construction on a new 4,400-square-foot public library at 66 Leverett Road appears to be a go, with town officials preparing to hire a general contractor for the $8.98 million project next week.
On Tuesday, the Library Building Committee announced that a $6.39 million general contractor bid from Construction Dynamics Inc. of Clinton was the lowest of five bids received for the project. The company is expected to be hired to handle the work by the Select Board next Wednesday, after due diligence is done by owner’s project manager Construction Monitoring Service.
This will mean that work should get underway on the new library about a dozen years after residents narrowly rejected a similar project.
While the bid was $236,000 higher than the $6.15 million general contractor bid estimates provided by Construction Monitoring Services, members of the Library Building Committee, chaired by Elaine Puleo, say a contract can be signed, groundbreaking can take place and the new building can open next summer.
“This is an amazing time in the very long road to a new Shutesbury Library,” Puleo wrote in an email Wednesday. “I am thrilled beyond belief.”
Neil Joyce from Construction Monitoring Services told the committee and the Select Board that he anticipates making a favorable recommendation for Construction Dynamics after reviewing various forms and documents.
The total project cost is around $8.98 million, when furnishings, site work and a public water source are included, with the building committee having $8.75 million in hand, meaning a shortfall of $232,326.
The Select Board, acting on an appeal from the building committee, voted to shave this shortfall by committing $60,840 in American Rescue Plan Act funding and an additional $50,623 earmark secured by Sen. Jo Comerford, D-Northampton, leaving a $120,863 gap.
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But Puleo notes that $100,000 of this gap relates to landscaping, which can be made up through both in-kind labor and donations. In addition, she said the Friends of the Library will continue to raise money through community dinners, tag and bake sales, Library Giving Day and the 5K RoadTown Turkey Trot, and more grants will be sought from state and federal agencies.
“I am totally confident that we can raise the necessary money to complete this project,” Puleo said.
The process of getting to the new library began when Shutesbury, competing with the town of Otis as towns with populations under 2,000, was awarded a $3.95 million Small Library Pilot Project grant in 2022. Following that, $2.44 million in town spending was approved at Town Meeting and a Proposition 2½ debt-exclusion vote.
“After months of diligent work by the Select Board-appointed Library Building Committee, the library director and other town officials, we will break ground for our new library,” Kate Cell, president of the library trustees, said in a statement. “It took the efforts of many people over many years to bring us to this point. The trustees thank first and foremost the people of Shutesbury, who put their faith in a new Small Library Pilot Project and approved a bond measure at the Town Meeting in 2022.”
Plans for the project, designed by Oudens Ello Architecture of Boston, show a single-story building with a peaked roof, with an adjacent driveway and parking. It would replace the M.N. Spear Memorial Library, a cramped 768-square-foot building with no running water that opened in the town center in 1902. The new building will have adult and children’s rooms, space for teens, a public meeting room, a staff work room and a director’s office.
While voters rejected spending $1.4 million for a $3.5 million project in 2012, when the town was last on the cusp of getting a new library building, the process to getting to a new library has actually run for close to 30 years, with the discussion about replacing the Spear building originally starting in the mid-1990s.
Library Director Mary Anne Antonellis notes that in addition to a complete design and construction plan, much work on the library site has already been done, including delineating and protecting wetlands, and a new well has been dug, which shows, aside from radon expected in a deep well, no per- and polyfluoroalkyl (PFAS) substances or other health hazards.
Scott Merzbach can be reached at smerzbach@gazettenet.com.
