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Select Board Gives Go Ahead to Negotiate Building Purchase

Posted: December 14, 2024

Voters will have final say on a sale. The Select Board on Monday voted to enter into negotiations with the owner of a former medical building at 677 Route 7A.

The actual purchase will require voter approval. The hope is to move town offices to the site.

The former medical building, technically a condominium, is located in South Shaftsbury. Dr. David E. King, who owns it, reluctantly closed the Shaftsbury Medical Associates office In June 2022 after lengthy efforts to recruit a new physician to take over the practice proved unsuccessful.

An active dental practice is also located on the property.

Members of the town's Community Center Development Committee (CCDC) presented their findings to the Select Board on Monday. They recommended purchasing the building.

"It's just a really great space," said said CCDC Co-Chair Zoe Contros Kearl, a representative of the Planning Commission. "We recommend that that becomes the town offices and that Cole Hall becomes community center."

Cole Hall, built as a Universalist Church in 1834 and gifted to the town in perpetuity, is the current site of the town offices and meeting space. It has had an ongoing problem with rainwater leaking into the structure. The Select Board continues to explore solutions to the problem.

"It would be great to restore this building to its original shape," Contros Kearl said of Cole Hall. "That would be a restoration project that would follow in the footsteps of managing to get everybody out of here, and that's also tied up with the fact that we need to do a lot of remediation downstairs."

The Route 7A building "is basically a ready-made situation in a lot of ways. Nothing has to be built," she said.

In addition to municipal offices, the building would have room for community functions, also, including health clinics and social services.

CCDC member Ben Benedict, an architect, described the building, which is a 4,413-square-foot condominium built in 1978 that shares a two-acre lot with the attached dental office. It is set back from Route 7A. There's parking for 24 vehicles in three lots. The medical center occupies 70 percent of the entire facility, the dental clinic 30 percent. The utilities are separate, except for the septic system.

The asking price of the former medical building stands at $375,000, or about $85 a square foot, he said.

"The almost 50-year-old building has been reasonably well cared for. The site is bright and airy, even serene," Benedict said. "it's an easy walk through the village to the store, post office, and school. The lawn and trees are attractive, and the sidewalk solid; asphalt paving is functional, but starting to show signs of age."

He said the need for a $20,000 roof replacement was not imminent but "on the horizon."

The interior of the building is dated. Carpet will need replacing; every room needs to be repainted; a few walls will need to be moved to make a new vault for the town clerk. The budget for these things would be $90,000, he said.

The HVAC system is functioning adequately. It consists of four HVAC units on the roof from 1998. An upgrade, at $16,000 per unit, looks like it can wait for now, he said.

The north wing of the building could accommodate a 375-square-foot town clerk's office with an adjacent 325-square-foot vault, a little less than double the size of the current vault. Dry basement safe below could be used for storage.

The remainder of the building could include a reception area, a generous 570-square-foot sky-lit gathering space with fireplace, a 300-square-foot work area, a kitchenette and small break room, four large offices, and seven small offices with existing sinks, Benedict said.

Even with significant move-in costs added, the total per square foot cost would be a fraction of the cost to build new, officials said.

For example, if the town paid the asking price for the building and spent $150,000 to renovate it, the square foot cost would creep up to around $120 a square foot. This would be about half the minimum cost for building new, Benedict said.

The original charge to the CCDC was to offer concrete recommendations to the Select Board by January 2025 on creating a community center, renovating town hall and related matters. About $558,000 of local funding for these projects is available, to be expended pending voter approval.

These funds originated from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA). Because of a change in federal rules, the town faced a deadline to spend these funds on shovel-ready projects by the end of this year.

However, to get around this, and have more time to plan and apply for matching grants, the Select Board instead applied $558,149 retroactively to COVID-era payroll, creating a fund balance of that amount in the general fund.

Contacted by email on Friday, Shaftsbury Town Administrator Paula Iken, who also serves as a cochair of the CCDC, confirmed that the purchase will require voter approval to proceed.

"At the moment, we're thinking it will be a special vote before Town Meeting. That could change. We are working with attorneys to make sure we do this all correctly, with regard to which kind of vote we'll need to do: Australian or Floor Vote," she wrote. "At any rate, we'll schedule and warn an informational meeting for the public, likely at the end of January, although we're still working out the timing."

She added, "Thus far, we've gotten nothing but positive feedback from the Town on this possible acquisition, and we are moving forward, one careful step at a time."

Compliments of: The Bennington Banner
Posted/Author: Mark Rondeau

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