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The Labor Department site architects will study for possible new state office building.
Architects who are analyzing options for replacing the flooded-out Waterbury state office complex will include construction of new offices on the grounds of the state Labor Department building as one of those options.
Architects Freeman French Freeman have been hired to study four options in a $248,000 contract the Burlington firm signed with the state last week. Though a new-construction option had been part of the plans, the actual site had not been formally identified.
Wanda Minoli of the state Department of Buildings and General Services said Wednesday that the site is the Labor Department lot. That site was chosen because it’s already owned by the state, is located near other state offices in Montpelier and easily accessible from the interstate and elsewhere, she said. (It is also near the Winooski River, but flood-worthiness is supposed to be part of the study.)
Architects will look at constructing an entirely new building or an addition to the existing building, Minoli said. The study does not include acquiring the neighboring Green Mountain Power Corp. building, which state officials had discussed as a possibility, she said.
Freeman French Freeman’s contract with the state also calls for it to study the feasibility, including the cost of flood protection for:
- Full reuse of the state office complex in Waterbury that had housed some 1,500 state workers but has been mostly closed since flooding from the Aug. 28 Tropical Storm Irene.
- A public/private use of the Waterbury site.
- Other combinations of options. One of those will be the possibility of moving the Education Department to a proposed private building in downtown Barre that Gov. Peter Shumlin has proposed.
Freeman French Freeman is due to report back to the state in March.
Mary Hooper, who is both mayor of Montpelier and a state representative who sits on the House Institutions Committee, said her first choice is to put state workers back on the site of the Waterbury complex. She said she believes both in supporting downtowns and in not shafting Waterbury.
If returning to Waterbury doesn’t work out, she said, the Labor Department building is a decent option. The state’s not likely to find that kind of space alongside existing state government buildings in downtown Montpelier, she said, and the Labor Department site is easily accessible via the bike path and roads.
Hooper said whatever the state does, she’d like it to be special _ to look at, to work in and for the public to visit. Her committee recently visited NRG Systems in Hinesburg. “I walked in there and said, ‘I want to work here. I don’t care what they do.’”
Unlike many public buildings built in recent decades, she said, “Let’s build something of substance and value.”
