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Subcommittee will not pursue Wilbraham senior center at Annual Town Meeting

Date: 2/19/2015

WILBRAHAM – The Senior Center Feasibility Subcommittee at its Feb. 12 meeting decided that it  would not pursue an article for the Annual Town Meeting warrant this May for a proposed new senior center, which would require a Proposition 2½ debt exclusion override.

“I think there’s too many options or balls up in the air [right now],” Interim Town Administrator Thomas Sullivan said. 

The subcommittee at its Jan. 20 meeting had decided to eliminate the former Bennett Turkey Farm from the list of potential sites.

“Really [it was] just the accessibility,” Director of Elder Affairs Paula Dubord said. “It’s just a very difficult property to access. It’s the smallest with the least buildable site and the accessibility would have to be through Minnechaug [Regional High School].”

The two remaining potential sites for the senior center include a 7.26 wooded acre area behind Christ the King Lutheran Church at 758 Main St. and a roughly 3.5 acre space at the Mile Tree Elementary School baseball field.

The 758 Main Street site is advertised for $139,000 in a listing by Keller Williams Realty.

During the Feb. 12 meeting, the members of the subcommittee rated both sites with a group matrix. The rating scale was from minus three to plus three with a zero rating representing impartiality.

Ultimately, the winner of the group matrix was the Mile Tree property with a final tally of 9 to 7. However, several committee members had their doubts about the suitability of the Mile Tree location.

Sullivan said the vote was “too close a call” and there was “no clear winner.”

Dubord said one of the reasons she thinks the property isn’t suitable is because of the amount of traffic that the site would receive due to its proximity to Minnechaug Regional High School.

“If we could have made the access traffic [for the Mile Tree site] a negative 10, we would have,” she added. 

The subcommittee ranked the traffic for the Mile Tree property with a negative three.

“I think it helped narrow down [the strengths and weaknesses of both sites],” Carolyn Brennan, a member of the subcommittee and Council on Aging director for East Longmeadow, said. “I still think we need more information on a lot of this.”

The committee ranked both properties in categories such as location image, buildable area and expansion potential, ownership, existing structures, hazardous materials, as well as geology and hydrology.

Dubord said the town has a 20-year lease with the Hampden-Wilbraham Regional School District for the Mile Tree property, which is ending.

“We can now renegotiate with the schools and if we wanted and if the town were willing to take the ball field out of the lease, they could do it at this time,” she added. “It’s the perfect timing to that.”

Building Inspector Lance Trevallion said one negative aspect of the 758 Main St. property is its lack of utilities such as a sewer line.

Another potential property at Fountain Park was also discussed by the subcommittee. Sullivan described this site as “a wild card.”

Subcommittee Chair Dennis Lopata said he spoke with Jules Gaudreau, spokesman for the Wilbraham Nature & Cultural Preserve, the stewards of Fountain Park, on Feb. 11 and the preserve indicated a strong sentiment to discuss an area of Fountain Park as a site location.

“It’s probably that they want to put up some kind of community building there but they probably can’t swing it so they figure, if they can probably get a senior center there [it would benefit them],” Sullivan said.

The town could lease the land from the Nature & Cultural Preserve, he added. However, town officials have yet to meet with a representative from the Preserve to discuss the matter formally.

“If they’re really interested ask them to come here,” Sullivan said to Lopata.

Dubord said in 2011 the Council on Aging was approached by Fountain Park, who were interested in having a new senior center being built on their property.

The subcommittee’s next meeting is scheduled for March 9.