Three new visions for Mansfield Town Hall, Mansfield Senior Center and Mansfield Community Center will be presented by the project designer at Saturday’s Celebrate Mansfield Festival, according to the town’s website.
The architectural firm edmSTUDIO was hired to make the designs after the town received a $250,000 state grant to develop a master plan for town buildings, according to a Feb. 9 project update. The firm ordered the three concepts by lowest to highest price estimate on the website for the project.
A survey is also linked in the master plan’s website that invites residents and UConn students to rank the importance of the facilities and order the concepts by preference. It also asks if respondents support the idea of a “modest parking garage or parking structure” where the town hall and community center would be located.
The first concept was projected to cost $44.9 million in the survey for renovations to the town hall and construction of a new senior center. In this design the senior center would remain in the same location, but with minimal improvements reflected by objectives like parking goals not being met in this concept, according to the master plan.
The second concept of the master plan is projected to come at a middle of the road $60.5 million estimate. This approach merges the senior center with the community center in what it’s calling the “intergenerational community center.”
The downsides with the intergenerational community center plan is that it would be farther from senior housing and increase traffic around the town hall, according to the master plan.
Charles Ausburger, the vice chair of the Mansfield Republican Town Committee, addressed the council on August 10 to express his opposition of this merger, according to the meeting minutes. He said that when he was a member of the council, he also opposed the merger.
The integration of the senior center and the community center would also mean a significant increase in parking spaces.
“To make parking counts work, some type of elevated parking deck is needed to meet new parking demands,” the master plan said.
The third concept expands on the idea of integrating the two, but with additional amenities that would rise the projected cost to $82 million, according to the survey. The extra money would make for a bigger two-story intergeneration community center and town hall.
While only three ideas will be presented at Saturday’s festival, a fourth plan to integrate the town hall into the site of current senior center was briefly contemplated by the town council before being rejected early this summer.
A July 27 town council motion to hire edmSTUDIO to study this fourth plan for an extra $12,500 out of the original $250,000 state grant budget ultimately failed after no one seconded it, according to the meeting minutes.
The architectural firm edmSTUDIO is expected to report back to the town council in October and to submit another grant application from the Community Investment Fund before the end of the year, according to the master plan. The timeline said the goal is to choose the concept by November 2027.