AGAWAM — At the City Council’s Aug. 5 meeting, Mayor Christopher Johnson announced delays to the completion of the police station and Still Brook Park, as well as an indefinite delay to the start of the May Hollow culvert replacement project.
For the high school building project, however, he said that, “at this point, everything is on schedule.”
The town hopes for a groundbreaking on the new high school next spring and for construction to begin in the summer and for the project to end in 2028 or 2029.
Police station
In March, the Agawam Advertiser News reported that the town was hoping for a fall 2024 opening for its new police station, though Johnson warned that supply chain issues could delay that. At that time, he and the project team were waiting for a date from suppliers as to when they would deliver a generator and an electrical switchboard.
On Aug. 5, Johnson told the City Council it won’t be open until March 2025 due to supply chain issues.
“There are some delays getting equipment for the station,” he said. “Supply chain plays a role in everything that goes on. Unless you’re in the business, it’s incredible to see the difficulty in getting pieces that you need.”
That said, Johnson now has a delivery date: late January or early February. On Aug. 7, Johnson told Reminder Publishing that the building needed a backup generator and certain electrical components to be delivered and installed before the city would occupy the new police station.
“We can’t occupy it or use it as a police station without the backup generator, so we have to wait for that to come in,” he said.
In 2022, the City Council agreed to purchase the former Hub Insurance building, at 1070 Suffield St., Agawam, for $2.1 million and renovate it into a new police station. The renovated building would replace the current station at 681 Springfield St., Feeding Hills.
The contractor expects construction to be complete by the year’s end, Johnson said.
Interior work is currently ongoing. The walls are up and have received their first coats of paint.
Painting, flooring and electrical and plumbing work still needs to be done, and the ceiling grids need to be installed.
Contractors are almost finished installing “state-of-the-art” lockers, he said, which are wider than the current station’s and can fit chargers and a firearm. At the City Council meeting, Councilor Dino Mercadante asked how many lockers there were. Johnson said he didn’t know, but believed there was a locker for every officer.
Construction on a sally port should start at the rear of the building this week, Johnson also told Reminder Publishing, though contractors are still waiting for the cell doors to be delivered.
When finished, the new station will be larger, hold more people (including prisoners), and will have a “modern” evidence storage system. In the current station, Johnson said, evidence is split between three different rooms because it has no space large enough to store it all.
The new station will also feature a “self-sufficient” dispatch area, he said.
“They don’t have to travel outside that area basically to do anything,” he said. “Now, they have to go to other parts of the station for copies, bathroom facilities, that kind of stuff.”
Asked if the police will be able to use the new station right after it opens, Johnson said they are currently planning the move. Dispatchers will move in first, he said. Then, the department will move the records, followed by the evidence.
“We’ll be splitting between the two facilities for a period while the move is happening,” he said.
The project cost, said former Mayor William Sapelli last October, would be just short of $14 million. The City Council initially borrowed $11.6 million, then borrowed $2 million more in November 2023. Johnson said last week the cost would be within the council-approved budget.
If the May Hollow culvert replacement project, which the town planned to start this summer, doesn’t begin by Dec. 31, Johnson said the police station bond will be amended, via the City Council, to allow the ARPA funds set aside for the culvert repairs to be used on the police station.
“It just ensures that we’re able to spend every last dollar of ARPA money,” he said, there’s a Dec. 31 deadline to commit the money to a project.
In that case, money borrowed for the police station would then be redirected to May Hollow, he said.
May Hallow
On May Hollow, Johnson told the councilors that the project, which was supposed to begin in June, is “completely up in the air.”
“We’re having extreme difficulties getting utility poles moved out of the construction area, despite the fact that people have been working on it for months,” he said.
Johnson told Reminder Publishing that two poles in the work area were the problem. One would directly interfere with the contractor’s ability to install the new culvert. On Aug. 7, he said the area’s utility companies told him the poles would be moved by the end of the week, and that people will be “double and triple checking” if that happens.
Until that happens — and it hasn’t always happened when the companies said it would — he could not give a start date for the project.
“It’s a situation where we have to know the poles are gone,” he said. “At that point, the contractor can say, ‘this is the date we’ll mobilize’ and from there, they’re refining their estimate as to how long the road will be closed for this construction to happen,” he said.
In May, Public Works Superintendent Mario Mazza said the project would be a “duplicate effort” of North Street. It would replace the “deteriorated” and “cracked” concrete culvert that allows May Hollow Brook to flow under North Westfield Street with a new aluminum structure. Work would take place next to the May Hollow Pump Station, approximately a minute’s drive from the Westfield line, starting in early June and finishing by September.
Mazza gave a cost estimate of $2.5 million, to be paid for with ARPA funds.
At the City Council meeting, Johnson said he didn’t want May Hollow to start so late that it risks being delayed by asphalt production plants taking their winter break, one of the reasons the North Street culvert repair project’s completion date was delayed from December 2023 to last April. The situation led to complaints to city councilors and heated social media discussions.
“It’s unanimous among my staff that we don’t want North Street 2,” Johnson told Mercadante at the City Council meeting.
However, he also said this was “North Street all over again” because the work area is at the bottom of a steep hill, which he said makes it unsafe to be open to traffic during a theoretical winter delay. The DPW could not cold patch the road to make it safe, he said, because its plows would dig up the cold patch.
“It’s worse than North Street,” said Mercadante.
“It’s a deeper dip. May Hollow is deeper than ‘deep gutter’ is,” said Johnson, using his nickname for the hole the culvert repair project made in North Street.
As stated previously, if the project does not begin by Dec. 31, the ARPA funds slated for it will be redirected to the police station and money borrowed for the police station will be redirected to May Hollow.
Still Brook Park
Johnson said he hopes Still Brook Park, located on the former Tuckahoe Turf Farm parcel, will open in mid-September, a delay of two months from the July date he told Reminder Publishing in April. Delays have been caused by an “unacceptable,” non-compact gravel pathway, which felt like beach sand to walk over, he said. That had to be replaced with better material that was compact, walkable, rideable, and wheelchair accessible.
There have also been supply chain issues regarding some amenities. Even so, the park itself is over 90% complete, he said, and benches and picnic tables are being installed.
In April, Johnson said the cost of the project was around $6 million. It was previously reported as $6.2 million, but the City Council approved an appropriation of $260,000 for amenities in December 2023. The park was to be funded with Community Preservation Act funds, Tennessee Gas mitigation funds, and $3.4 million in borrowing.
