The Warren Select Board and its town garage planning committee are fine-tuning a request for proposals for a new town garage on Vaughn Brown Road. The subcommittee met last week on August 8, 2024.
At that meeting select board members and committee members worked to finalize the RFP which they hope to issue next week with a goal of having an engineering/architectural firm on board by October so that the project can be presented to voters at Town Meeting next March.
Current thinking is that the garage will be approximately 12,000 square feet and will feature five 24-foot-wide bays. The working committee has several important criteria for the project including addressing noise concerns from neighbors, building an energy-efficient structure using sustainable building and design practices, using solar power for heat, electricity and hot water and integrating the building seamlessly with the landscape.
Other criteria includes working with VTrans to address traffic safety and circulation in and around the site and specifically at the intersection of Vaughn Brown Road and Route 100 as well as demolishing the former garage on School Road and “regreening” that site as needed. The town has identified the current garage location as suitable for village residential development.
At last week’s meeting the board and committee members, with town road foreman Andrew Bombard, discussed process and some of the logistical details of the building. Bombard suggested that much of the structure should have a 20-foot-high ceiling and that the office area could feature a 10-foot ceiling with storage space above it. The project will need some 16 parking spaces, a back-up generator or possible power wall option and the ability to store town road operations materials.
Material storage needs include:
- 5500 yards of sand.
- 300-400 yards of salt.
- 3000-6000 yards of gravel.
- 2500 yards of stone, give or take.
- Culvert storage.
- Concrete blocks.
- 1500-2000 gallon tank for diesel fuel.
- Concrete blocks for culvert headers.
- 1500-2000 gallon tank for diesel fuel.
- Ground asphalt pile.
None of these details is cast in stone yet, once the town hires an engineering/architectural firm, an iterative process will begin that leads to final design. The select board members are hopeful that the process will yield a proposed final design that can be included in next year’s town report so that voters will have information needed to pass a bond at Town Meeting.
