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09/19/2018 08:00 AMIt had been a trying few weeks for the E.C Scranton Library Building Committee after the State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO) threatened to withhold a large part of the renovation project funding over preservation of the Hull Building. However, after a few discussions, the library committee managed to come to terms with SHPO and the project is now back on track—a track that includes the full demolition of the Hull Building.
The library project received a $1 million grant through the Connecticut State Library before the renovation project went to referendum in 2017. When the library applied for the grant, library officials said it was not made immediately clear that SHPO also needed to sign off on the project design for the money to be released. SHPO had previously raised concerns that the Hull Building, which faces Wall Street, is not going to be saved and those concerns had not faded.
The problem was that not one, but two state grants, each worth $1 million, are tied into SHPO approval. The library received one State Library Grant and one State Construction Grant; the State Library has the authority to release both grants, which it won’t do without SHPO approval.
Committee members had met with the two SHPO representatives in late August, at which point it became clear that SPHO wanted to see the Hull Building façade saved and wasn’t open to much negotiation on that point.
The committee had originally intended to include the Hull Building in the library renovations, but found it became unworkable as the window lines and floor levels aligned poorly with the rest of the project, and also the quality of the building’s construction didn’t lend itself to preservation. Working the Hull Building façade back into the design plan would have affected the project timeline and the project cost.
With SHPO expressing a strong desire to see the façade saved, however, project architect Ken Best started pulling some numbers together on what it would cost to save the one wall. The total quickly started to reach $1 million once costs like construction delays and contingencies were built in.
Committee vice-chair and library trustee Henry Griggs said the cost to save one wall seemed to go a long way with SHPO.
“The number started at $600,000 and could be as high as $1 million because you are having to protect something that is very fragile during demolition and construction all through a couple of years of things going on around it,” he said. “[SHPO] saw that was not feasible given our budget and said, ‘OK, we are going to lose this historic resource, so what can you do to make it up to the building or what can you do to compensate for the loss of this 20th-century commercial building?’”
The committee met with SHPO on Sept. 14 in Hartford to discuss the issue of the Hull Building. Following the meeting, Griggs notified fellow trustees and town officials that the renovation project was now back on track.
“Well it’s a big relief for sure,” he said. “We are very pleased that we can move forward without any further delay to the project.”
The library will not be required to save any part of the Hull Building and now has to pick from a selection of mitigation options to compensate for the loss of the historic building. According to Griggs, SHPO offered three mitigation options, and all parties decided option number one would be best.
Option one includes four parts: Fully documenting the Hull Building to historic standards; commission a historic and architectural survey of both sides of the commercial strip of Boston Post Road running west of Wall Street; make a donation to the Madison Historical Society’s preservation fund in the amount of $10,000 within a year; and “arrange and present a year’s worth of programming—four to six sessions—on historic preservation defined very broadly, which could include archaeological investigation.”
“For the curious, the other two options were to make a $50,000 donation to the historical society, or to fund an $125,000 archaeological investigation of Hammonasset,” said Griggs in an email. “Option 1, although it entails more work, was far more palatable to those of us in the room, not only for its lower cost, but also for its appealing content. One can imagine that these things might have been done voluntarily, under more favorable circumstances. Option 1 has a cost, but it makes lemonade from lemons.”
SHPO National Register Specialist/Architectural Historian Marena Wisniewski confirmed that a selection of one of the mitigation options would be formal compensation to the community for the demolition of the Hull Building. Agreeing to how the selection of a mitigation option plays out time-wise regarding formal SHPO approval is something she said is yet to be determined.
“That’s a little tricky because there are several options and some of them are not a quick fix, so we are working with the library to make sure that the community is appropriately compensated...Some of those options may be programming that may go on longer than before the library would like to [wait to] start construction,” she said. “I think maybe the best thing to do is wait and see what the library wants to do. Once they decide what they want to do, then we work that part out.”
The only possible drawback in being able to eliminate the Hull Building is it will take the library out of the running for any grants that have to go through SHPO in the future, according to Griggs.
“There is one unfortunate consequence,” he said. “We have a historic district that was listed on the State Register of Historic Places...On the national level, there is a procedure for delisting, but they don’t have one on the state level. In the SHPO file, there is going to be a letter that is going to note that we won’t be eligible for funding that has to be approved by SHPO in the future, just for the library property.”
Griggs said on Sept. 17 the full building committee is expected to hold a conference call to accept this option and the trustees are set to meet that evening to do the same.
“Once we signal to SHPO that Option 1 is accepted, they will prepare a letter stipulating all these requirements, and send us guidelines for preparing a memorandum of understanding [MOU] to seal the deal,” he said. “We can put the project out to bid before the MOU is executed, but must wait until then to sign any contracts. This timing should not prevent the project from moving forward as planned.”
Throughout the discussions with SHPO, the concern had been if this would push the project timeline out to the next calendar year, but Griggs said with this news he thinks the committee can stick to the timeline.
“I think with the existing schedule we hope to have a general contractor in place in a couple of months,” he said. “I think we will be in good shape for site work like the demolition of the Blue House and the Hull Building and the shed. That can all take place and they can start preparing the grounds and grading and setting it up, so I think we are still on schedule.”
When the SHPO issue appeared in August, the town had put a hold on the $9 million in binding for the project. Now, First Selectman Tom Banisch said once the town gets the high sign from the library that all the approvals are formally in place, the town will start up the bonding process again.
“This is obviously a good sign,” he said of the news. “We just need to cross our Ts and dot the Is. As soon as we are comfortable, we can start the bonding up again.”