‘It’s a base hit’: Arkwright accepts plans for highway addition
OBSERVER Photos by Braden Carmen Arkwright Town Supervisor Brian McAvoy is “looking forward” to a new addition to the Highway Department Building. The addition is part of the town’s reimagined plans for infrastructure after the plans for a new Town Hall and highway barn were out of the town’s price range.
Pictured is a preliminary design for the new addition to the Arkwright Highway Department Building.
OBSERVER Photos by Braden Carmen Arkwright Town Supervisor Brian McAvoy is “looking forward” to a new addition to the Highway Department Building. The addition is part of the town’s reimagined plans for infrastructure after the plans for a new Town Hall and highway barn were out of the town’s price range.
Pictured is a preliminary design for the new addition to the Arkwright Highway Department Building.
Trending
ARKWRIGHT -- After bids for a new Arkwright Town Hall building came in dramatically over what the town could afford to pay, the Arkwright Town Board reevaluated more realistic possibilities to improve facilities in the town.
That process recently took another big step forward.
Members of the Arkwright Town Board unanimously accepted the plans for an addition to the Highway Department building at a recent meeting. The resolution is subject to permissive referendum for 30 days after posting.
"It should let us get into a nicely refurbished town hall, with an addition, with accessible bathrooms, with storage, with separate space for the town and the court. We should be able to do all of those things, plus do this vehicle storage addition, for the money we have," town Supervisor Brian McAvoy said. "... I'm happy that we can do this. I'm looking forward to getting this done."
CPL will be contracted to prepare the plans for a new vehicle garage bay addition to the Highway Department building. The addition will be placed on existing town property, located on Center Road. The cost is not to exceed $800,000.
"My opinion is, sometimes you can't hit a home run. Sometimes you hit a single," said McAvoy. "But it's a base hit. It's moving the town forward. It's doing the right things – we're not raising taxes, we're not borrowing money, we're not wildly deviating from our plan, we're just making a little bit of a compromise. But we're advancing around the bases."
Reserve funds allocated for the previous building along will be used to cover the cost for the addition.
After the initial plan for an all-encompassing building was scrapped, McAvoy said, "we're not going to borrow money to do this and we're not going to raise taxes to do this. If we have to do that, we won't do it."
CPL engineers are authorized to prepare specifications for specific plans and bid said items.
"As soon as we start to see the bids, parallel to that, we'll start with the Town Hall refurbishment project," McAvoy said. "I don't think it's going to be cheap, but it's going to be nice when it's done."
McAvoy described that for the Town Hall, an addition will be built to add office space and indoor bathrooms, along with refurbishment of current facilities.
"It will look like a new building when it's done. That's the plan, but it's not cast in concrete – but that's what we want," McAvoy said.