Town Manager Tom Christensen brought the East Longmeadow Town Council up to speed on a space study for the new Town Hall.
Photo credit: ELCAT01028
EAST LONGMEADOW — The East Longmeadow Town Council is in the early steps for crafting a moving plan to the new Town Hall at 382 North Main St., with Town Manager Tom Christensen estimating a move around 2030.
Christensen gave the Town Council a look at the building and its measurements with a space study presentation, while brainstorming next steps at the meeting on Sept. 22.
The Town Council’s work to purchase the building first began in 2022, appropriating $2.4 million from free cash to be used alongside a $3.3 million bond.
The council switched payment methods in 2024, switching free cash for American Rescue Plan Act funding and acquiring the building by friendly eminent domain.
Eminent domain is a cooperative legal process where a government body can acquire property for public use. Friendly eminent domain is similar to friendly condemnation, where a property owner agrees to sell land to the government or public entity at a negotiated price and avoids a legal process.
Christensen said the town started preparing for the new Town Hall space early. The first step is figuring out what the town has and what it needs.
“We hired ArchitectureEL to help us out with some space planning,” Christensen said. “The first step there, obviously, is to go through our existing office spaces, figure out how many people are in these spaces, how much room they have and then how much room they need, meaning, ‘do they have too much room?’”
ArchitectureEL’s spacing study compared the town hall with 382 North Main St. and looked at current square-foot assessments in both buildings for each department and need. The study also provided a section on spacing and size recommendations.
He said some employees have already been moved to 382 North Main St. and the town still needs to “line up the numbers” to ensure there’s enough space for everybody in the new building.
“If you can take anything away from this, the good news is, there is [enough space], with room to spare,” Christensen said. “The number of square feet we need, we have and more in this new space. I’m guessing a lot of these numbers are going to change as we have our conversations internally, in terms of ‘who should be next to each other, who should share an office space, who should share a suite, who should share a floor, where do we want to strategically locate the departments?’”
Christensen said he wanted to establish a committee for conversations on building layout in previous meetings. The town has to design the full move and what it will do with the Town Hall at 60 Center Square.
Christensen had a few ideas for the space, such as expanding the library or allowing the East Longmeadow Police Department to use the building if the station undergoes improvements.
“That is the charge that I want to give this committee, which I will be on,” Christensen said. “I would really like if one or two of you were on it because I think that this is going to be a long process that’s going to certainly involve appropriation. We’ve been doing so good being on the same page that I don’t want to really do anything anymore without, sort of, council input and direct influence in.”
His next steps include sitting down with department heads and learning who works best together, which he said will help design the space.
“We have some time to get plans going early because we are going to have to put some money into that capital stabilization account that we created, I would think,” Christensen said. “The earlier we know what that needs to look like for phase one and phase two and phase three, I think the better off we’ll be.”
