Recently Phil Bell, of Bell Engineering, presented final plans for the TOMVAC building to the Marlborough Town Board. After a dozen years of minimal use, TOMVAC will be getting a new lease on life.

The plans call for revitalizing the 6,000 sq/ft building into a community center with one room capable of seating 150 people and an activity room that can handle 75 people. In addition, there will be a conference room, a new “full blown” kitchen and a smaller “soft” kitchen, several new windows, new men and women’s restrooms along with sufficient storage and closet space. Heating and air conditioning is also planned for the building.

A significant amount of work is slated for the outside of the building; a new roof and siding, soffits where needed, an ADA appropriate main entrance on the Route 9W side and fixing up the back entrance facing the parking lot.

Bell broke out the costs, which include demolition and construction: $150,000 for the community room; $100,000 for the Activity room; $23,000 for the conference room; heating, air conditioning, electrical and plumbing at $250,000; $120,000 for the roof and related outside work and $166,000 for the engineering/oversight costs. Bell indicated that 10% in contingency costs will be added to the estimate, bringing the total to about $890,000. He stressed that this is just an estimate and construction costs could be higher once they go out for bid, with a hoped for start of the project in late 2020. He said the entire project would take from 4 to 6 months to complete.

Councilman Scott Corcoran said, “we’re hoping we would get a favorable bid and also there is a 10% contingency that hopefully we don’t have to use.”

Supervisor Al Lanzetta said the goal is to use member items to fund the entire project rather than taxing the residents of Marlborough. Presently $250,000 has been secured through the state and he is speaking with NYS Sen. James Skoufis and NYS Assemblyman Jonathan Jacobson for additional member item funding.

“They’ve known about the project from day one when they were elected and hopefully, crossing our fingers, we’ll get pretty much the full amount,” he said. “We’re at the baby stages and we’re just hoping we get the money to build it. Right now we’re concentrating on building this for the community and the taxpayers who voted to keep this.”

Lanzetta pointed out that rehabilitating TOMVAC is far cheaper than building something from scratch.

“It’s $2 million versus $890,000,” he said.