At a meeting of the Planning & Economic Development Board on Aug. 11, town officials conducted a site plan review for a new Municipal Building Complex that would bring the Police department, Fire department and Town Hall together on a single 8.3-acre site at 120 Main Street (Route 109) near Pond Street.

The project, years in the making, is designed to replace aging and inadequate facilities while also creating what officials describe as an anchor for the western end of a future downtown Medway.

"This is an exceptionally robust plan," said Medway Town Manager Michael Boynton. "This is the largest project that the town of Medway has ever done or likely will ever do, short of building a new school."

The project team has spent approximately 10 months developing the current proposal, although planning for the site and the community's municipal space needs began years earlier.

In the fall of 2022, the town purchased the former Medway Block property for $4.5 million. The business had occupied the site for more than 75 years. The site was known to have a hydraulic oil leak, Boynton said, but the contamination has since been addressed.

The town's master plan calls for the "creation of a downtown concept for Medway," Boynton said, and officials see the new complex as "a fantastic anchor on the western-most point of what would otherwise be considered a downtown."

Resident involvement

Boynton said the project team held outreach meetings and residents were concerned about the appearance of the facility, the desire to shield nearby homes from views of parking and public activity, pedestrian safety along Main and Pond Streets, and a fear the site might become a "public entertainment venue."

Boynton said those comments were incorporated into the planning process, particularly the concerns of residents who live closest to the proposed complex.

A 12-member building committee, which Boynton described as a "cross-section of Medway residents with significant professional experience," has helped guide the project.

Building design

The proposed complex will connect the fire department, Town Hall and police department in one coordinated facility.

The front of the fire department will face Main Street, with the Town Hall rising behind it and the Police department connected farther to the rear and accessible from Pond Street. A storage garage is planned in the far corner of the site.

"Basically, what we're doing is creating a town center by building a municipal complex on this site," said Don Walter with Dore + Whittier Architects. "In fact, linking all three - the Town Hall, police and fire - together, with the Town Hall being really the centerpiece of it all."

The design is intentionally rooted in Medway's architectural history, Walter said.

"We're taking a lot of our cues from Medway, historic Medway, New England vernacular," he said. "We were charged with the term 'Yankee frugal,' and we take that very seriously with the design and symmetry, but also as it relates to cost. We've been working very hard to keep the costs under control and affordable."

The buildings are designed to appear as though they developed over time, rather than as a single institutional structure.

"We tried to make it look like it's a campus system developed over time," Walter said.

Boynton noted that connecting the three departments into one complex, rather than constructing separate facilities, will result in significant savings.

"We save money on infrastructure; we save money on utilities, on HVAC-type systems, teledata systems; and, importantly, we're able to function with space," explained Boynton." So, instead of a fire station with its own large training center and a police station with its own large training center, we consolidated those training centers into one spot on the third floor of Town Hall - that's the training center for both police and fire - it also doubles as an Emergency Operations Center. We know, based on winter or weather conditions here, that we will utilize emergency operations functions in these facilities. It's New England and we wanted everything under one roof and the ability to be able to do that on one site is fantastic, it is absolutely fantastic, and it's efficient."

John Perry of Langan Engineering & Environmental Services said the new building footprint would be approximately 41,000 square feet. The site will include 62 visitor parking spaces, 40 spaces for police cruisers, 38 spaces for other staff and 16 spaces for electric vehicles.

Traffic

Traffic along busy Route 109 - which serves as a regional connector between the Route 495 corridor and Route 95/128 corridor - was another major focus of the planning process.

Stephan Zaets, a senior transportation engineer with Vanasse & Associates, said the Municipal Building Complex traffic plan is being coordinated with the proposed Heritage on Main development across the street.

Zaets said the complex is expected to generate an estimated 484 daily trips, including approximately 74 fire department trips and 410 trips associated with the police department and Town Hall offices. The estimate is based on approximately 70 employees across the municipal operations.

That traffic would be distributed among five driveways with the main visitor entrance and exit would be located on Pond Street, and a separate entrance on Main Street for Town Hall employees and police. Two additional driveways on Main Street would be reserved for fire department only.

The fire department would also have a dedicated traffic signal that would activate when emergency vehicles are responding to a call.

Other roadway improvements would include a dedicated eastbound left-turn lane from Main Street/Route 109 into the Municipal Building Complex and a dedicated westbound left-turn lane for vehicles entering Heritage on Main.

One of the proposed fire department driveways would align with the residential driveway serving Heritage on Main.

A cohesive Main Street

The project team said its goal is to ensure that the Municipal Building Complex and the Heritage on Main development work together as part of a broader vision for a more cohesive Main Street.

Boynton said construction costs have risen sharply in recent years, particularly since the town began work on the Department of Public Works garage in 2019, and officials believe they have developed a plan that balances the community's needs with financial responsibility.

"This facility will, in and of itself, be the most expensive thing that the town has ever built," Boynton said. "But we believe we have a plan."

To watch a recording of the meeting, visit https://new.medwaycable.com/internetchannel/show/4321?channel=3.