Chicopee Makes Some Landmark Improvements
‘Historic rehabilitation.’
That’s the phrase Lee Pouliot and others used to describe work at Chicopee’s historic City Hall and the neighboring, long-closed main library.
In doing so, they made the distinction between this type of work and historic restoration.
Indeed, the latter returns something to what it once was at a specific point, said Pouliot, director of the city’s Planning Department, adding that this will not be the case with either building.
Indeed, the library, closed since 2004, when a new facility was built, will be renovated for use as a community hub, home for a farmer’s market, and meeting space, said Pouliot, while phase 2 of a project at City Hall and its annex will involve an office-by-office renovation of spaces to suit current needs and technology and make the best use of those spaces.
“One purpose of the project is to right-size some of the office spaces; we have some offices that have too many people crammed into too small a space,” he explained. “Another priority is building security. In working with all the department heads, we identified the offices that get the most visitation on a daily basis and tried to relocate them to the lower floors of the building, so we didn’t have the public accessing areas that they don’t need to.”
The City Hall project, which has been ongoing for a decade, has been slowed by the pandemic, but also a lengthy — as in more than three years — design phase that required large amounts of data collection from city department heads and employees about space requirements and specific needs.