A New Town Hall

Sometimes in life you have to admit defeat, you have to accept that your plans will not come to pass. In other words, you have to accept reality. That time has come for the Town of West Tisbury with regards to renovating the Town Hall.

The dream was glorious: return an historic building to its former beauty while providing a modern and useful work space for the Town employees. However, it has been ten years since the Town began its attempt to actualize this dream. And, in that ten years - as I suspect in many of the previous years - little, if any, maintenance has been performed on the building. Anyone who attempts to renovate this building is taking a large risk that these years of neglect have not created conditions that make renovation economically infeasible. No one – neither Town officials nor Preservation Society experts - really knows the state of the building or what it would ultimately cost to renovate it. Further, the Town does not know whether the Preservation Trust would be willing to take over the building and lease it back to the Town at a price the Town would be willing to pay.

It is time to accept the fact that the world and West Tisbury have changed. The center of the Town is moving to the North Tisbury area. What is now the Town center is slowly but inexorably becoming an historic district. I know many will be saddened to see the Town Hall located in a different part of Town, but it is far more likely that the costs of building a new Town Hall elsewhere can be more accurately estimated and that these costs would be significantly lower than those for renovating the existing building. Recent building projects support this view.

Oak Bluffs was able to build its library, a 15,000 sq. ft. building, for $3,800,000, or roughly $250/sq.ft. Chilmark built a 5600 sq. ft. Town Hall for $1,500,000, or $268/sq.ft. Is there a reason why we could not build a new Town Hall for $300/sq. ft.? At that rate a 6500 sq.ft. building, which should provide adequate space for our Town employees for twenty or thirty years, would cost $1,950,000, which, I would argue, would be a heck of a lot less than other alternative ways of housing the Town employees. We have an obligation to provide our Town employees good working conditions. We also have an obligation to our taxpayers. Building a new Town Hall is the most effective way of meeting both obligations.

So, let’s accept reality. It’s time to get the show on the road. Sell the current Town Hall to the Preservation Trust. Build a new Town Hall of which we can all be proud on land now owned by the Town in North Tisbury.