Authority Narrowing List Of Contractors

By John Voket

Members of the Fairfield Hills Authority are working in marathon fashion with a cadre of other municipal officials and contractors to hone a pack of 16 potential companies down to a few that will be considered for two of the largest and most pressing projects on the town-owned campus.

At its last meeting, members of the authority were presented with seven Connecticut-based companies that expressed interest in handling the construction of playing fields on the grounds, while nine regional companies expressed a desire to be considered for a new town hall project.

The company that will eventually mount a new town hall building project will also be charged with mothballing any buildings on the campus the authority agrees should be preserved for future municipal use or possible commercial development.

To that end, authority chairman Robert Geckle toured four of the buildings he expects will be preserved for future use. Mr Geckle told The Bee Wednesday that Stratford, Newtown, Shelton, and Woodbury Halls had experienced “considerably more deterioration” from water invasion since his last good look some time ago.

“We need to do a lot more homework before we decide on mothballing [or demolition] of any of these buildings,” Mr Geckle said. “We took a good look at their conditions with an eye on determining what estimated renovation costs might be.”

Mr Geckle said he went through the buildings with representatives of O&G Industries, the project management firm hired to oversee short-term projects on the campus, and representatives of DeMarco, Miles and Murphy, the firm charged with day-to-day operational management of the facilities.

“My impression of those buildings was somewhat more negative than during my last visit,” Mr Geckle said. “You can see more deterioration and water infiltration and mold.”

At its October 18 meeting, the authority favored selecting two to four from among the seven contenders for the fields, and the eight looking to develop a new town hall based on reviews of the companies’ qualifications instead of seeking bids from all those expressing interest in the projects.

First Selectman Herbert Rosenthal said it was not uncommon for the town to establish contracts with companies in this manner, especially on projects of such significant scope and cost.

“The town has done this before,” Mr Rosenthal said. “As a matter of fact, we hired O&G to oversee the Fairfield Hills project management using this process.”

The process involves a broad panel of individuals representing the authority, the management company, O&G, the town public works department and other appropriate officials. Those representatives either collectively or individually provided ranking sheets for each contender for both the fields and town hall/mothballing projects based on data provided by the companies on similar projects they have completed.

Mr Geckle said Parks and Recreation staff members and commissioners spent more than five hours ranking firms in the running for field projects but referred questions to Parks and Rec Commissioner Edward Marks. At press time, Mr Marks had not returned calls for comment on that portion of the ranking process.

On Wednesday, Mr Geckle remained adamant that the rankings would be completed in time for O&G to compile them and return to the town with the two to four top-ranked contenders by early next week. At that time those contenders would be notified, and authority and municipal officials would schedule interviews with each company on their specific areas of interest.

At the October 18 authority meeting, members on hand agreed that each interview should feature both conceptual plans or renderings to illustrate their vision for the completed projects, as well as some very preliminary ideas of anticipated costs for each component of the work.

During that meeting, Mr Marks circulated a 2002 report that was originally produced for the Fairfield Hills Master Plan Advisory Committee detailing the Parks and Recreation officials’ preferences for playing fields engineering. That report considered aspects including proximity of playing fields to each other; the use of existing fields versus existing open space on the campus; parking proximity, capacity, and safety; possible elimination of buildings; lighting; aesthetics; and continued use of existing fields versus tearing up those fields and relocating them elsewhere on the grounds.

Mr Rosenthal said he expected the final few companies chosen to interview on the town hall/mothballing proposal would be charged with considering whether to tear down all or part of Shelton House. That building, or its location, has remained the top contender for a new town hall site since before the town began working to acquire the property several years ago.

“We would likely ask the companies to evaluate whether or not Shelton House could be effectively renovated to accommodate a town hall, or if it should just be demolished,” Mr Rosenthal said. “If the prevailing opinion was that it should be razed, we would of course ask the representatives to justify why new construction is better.”

Mr Rosenthal suggested that in either scenario, the new town hall might be pushed back physically from Shelton House’s present location, or built out from the rear to eventually attach to Bridgeport Hall, the single largest one-story building on the campus. During previous authority meetings it was revealed that private investors were already eyeing Bridgeport Hall for possible redevelopment for an institutional or private catering and banquet facility.

But the first selectman suggested the town might achieve significant financial savings by building a smaller town hall from or in place of Shelton House, and using the connecting Bridgeport Hall’s many ground floor rooms as meeting rooms and offices for town services.

He suggested that by combining the two buildings in a municipal center, the finished product might serve as not only a town hall, but a central polling location for all the town elections, as a cultural or recreation center, or for other combined uses to accommodate the many and growing needs of the community.

Mr Geckle said that he expected finalists to be qualified and contacted in time for them to develop conceptual plans and drawings to be presented to the interview panel. The authority chairman said as long as the “short list” is finalized by next week, he expected the finalists to be ready with preliminary plans, renderings, and cost estimates as early as November 15.