• Hubbardston gets state land for senior center, safety complex

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Jonathan Yeo, DCR director of Water Supply Protection, speaks during a celebration Saturday of a Hubbardston-DCR land swap. At left are Hubbardston town administrator Anita Scheipers and Dan Galante, chairman of the Board of Selectmen. T&G Staff/Christine Hochkeppel
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  By Bradford L. Miner
  Correspondent

  
  Posted Jan. 10, 2016 at 8:57 PM
  Updated at 6:59 PM
  
  
  

  HUBBARDSTON - A land swap between the state and town, years in planning and execution, has set the stage for a proposed $2.5 million senior center and $4.5 million public safety building on Gardner Road.

  Right now a “Future Home of Hubbardston’s Senior Center and Police-Fire Complex” sign, just east of the intersection of Route 68 and New Templeton Road, identifies the site to be developed.

  Local and state officials and more than a dozen seniors gathered Saturday afternoon at the municipal building to acknowledge the successful transfer of 12.2 acres of the former Flintlock Farm from the state Department of Conservation and Recreation to the town.

  Town Administrator Anita Scheipers said a $497,000 grant secured by recently retired state Sen. Stephen M. Brewer will be used to prepare the site, establish access roads, drill a public water supply well and install a septic system for the future buildings.

  The state money will also be spent on a project manager and architect to produce complete drawings for the senior center.

  The town swapped 17 acres of woodlot on Mile Road on the Barre town line and 46 acres of wetland off Natty Pond Drive. The two parcels had been identified by DCR’s Division of Water Supply Protection as significant additions to the Ware River watershed.
  

  The Ware River is a supplemental water source for Quabbin Reservoir and the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority system providing drinking water to 2.5 million people in Eastern Massachusetts as well as Chicopee, Wilbraham and South Hadley.

  The land swap was facilitated by David Opatka of the state Department of Capital Asset Management and Maintenance.

  “A land swap sounds like it should be simple. In fact, it was anything but,” Dan Galante, chairman of the Board of Selectmen, told the gathering.

  He cited the cooperation and professionalism of state personnel as well as state Sen. Anne Gobi, D-Spencer, for successful completion of the swap.

  Jonathan Yeo, director of the Division of Water Supply Protection, said the agency owns 100,000 acres in Central Massachusetts and considerable acreage in Hubbardston.

  He acknowledged DCR’s commitment to payments in lieu of taxes to cities and towns and cited a strong working relationship with communities across the region.

  “You might think this took a long time, but in terms of state land swaps, this is almost record speed. We just finished a land swap that was seven years in the making, and the one before that took 11 years,” he said.

  Mr. Yeo called the swap a win-win in terms of water supply protection and meeting the town’s future municipal building needs.

  “You needed nice dry land in the center of town for a senior center and a public safety building. We bought a large old farm in the 1990s and this site is a prime slice of that property. In turn, we acquired 53 acres of forest and swampland for water supply protection,” the director said.

  Town administrator Anita Scheipers' earliest efforts, dating back a decade or so, focused on town-owned property for a senior center.

  When no suitable land was found, and building a second floor on the Slade Building was deemed structurally unsound, the town looked for other land that might be available.

  Paul Hale, co-chairman of the Long Range Facilities Planning Committee, recounted a meeting in the Barre office of Mr. Brewer.

  “He asked us what land we were interested in and we told him about the site we had in mind. He got up out of his chair and made a call, and we knew right then that this was going to happen,” Mr. Hale said.

  The town administrator said the state grant money and $50,000 approved at town meeting will be sufficient to complete a final design for the senior center and a schematic design for the public safety complex.

  “It will be up to selectmen to put requests for construction money for one or both of the buildings on the next annual town meeting warrant,” Ms. Scheipers said.