News

Controversy surrounds new community center design

BY CHRIS KOTTERMAN

The Takoma Park community center is once again the talk of the town, but praise is hard to come by.

Architect Lawrence Abell of Lawrence Abell and Associates, the La Plata firm hired to design the center, presented a computer-generated image of the finished building at a council session on Feb. 17, and it was not what the council had in mind.

Many council members, especially Ward 2’s Heather R. Mizeur, expressed frustration at the way the process has been carried out.

"If we hadn’t had this briefing tonight, when would we have seen the changes?" she said. "When it was all said and done, and we had this building to look at?"

Mizeur drew applause from citizens in attendance when she said, "This madness has to stop. We need to be fully informed."

The revised design is still a Victorian-style building, but it lacks many of the features depicted in the artist’s concept drawing that has been widely circulated. Most notably missing are the landscaped plazas along the front and sides of the building, and the Takoma Park Municipal Library’s façade, intended to help the library match the style of the new construction.

Ward 6 Councilmember Doug Barry described the structure as a Victorian building attached to a 1960’s library, and a third structure that "looks kind of like a drive-in bank."

The controversy has led one Takoma Park man, Rudy Arredondo, to file suit against the city in Montgomery County Circuit Court, seeking an injunction to halt construction on the community center and several other projects, alleging that the city violated its own laws prohibiting deficit spending.

The city has come up against many problems in the design and construction of the building, not the least of which was the discovery that the site is also a floodplain. Meeting county requirements for flood control added about $750,000 to the project and required design changes, said City Manager Richard M. Finn.

Finn and Abell also said that the artist’s concept was exactly that: a concept. Abell told the City Council that the concept drawing was completed after about a month’s research. Finn said that original bids to build a center, with everything included in that concept drawing, came in around $12-$13 million, which was never within the city’s reach. The low bidder was contacted to revise the design to fit the roughly $6.7 million budget that the city had available through bonds and grants, and the City Council did approve the final contract. But they never saw a picture.

"There was no construction rendering," Finn said. "Basically the architect explained it verbally, and with two-dimensioned plans, if you will."

Judy Lawrence, of the citizens’ group Sustainable Takoma, said that she is not surprised by what has happened.

"The Council didn’t understand what it is they were building. Some of those things in the drawing were never intended," she said. "If one watches closely how the city is managed, on some level, one would not be surprised as to how we’ve gotten to where we’ve gotten. This is the outcome we could expect, given the quality of management."

Finn defended the project design as a responsible alternative.

"We are building a building that we have money to pay for," he said. "Many of the things that were taken out...were designed in a way that they can be added on, once additional grant money can be found."

Finn also said that the city has been forced to move forward in order to maintain funding.

"Some of the grants received go back three to four years," he said. "We were told that if we didn’t commit the funds and start spending them, we would lose them."

In the end, Lawrence said, the community center will probably do what everyone needs it to do, but it’s not the flagship building of the community like it should be.

"I fear what we’re actually getting is a community center lite, attached to an expanded, renovated city hall," she said. "People of goodwill have worked very hard on this, and it’s just sad."

The Council also addressed two other issues in the special session. It voted unanimously to support legislation in the Maryland State Assembly that will require electronic voting machines to produce a verifiable paper trail that can be audited in case a recount is necessary, and also passed a resolution requesting that the CVS store in Old Takoma replace its current sign with a lower, less conspicuous sign that does not scroll advertisements.