The Farmington Mercury is brought to you by Farmington Storage, 155 Scott Swamp Road — the only storage facility in Connecticut with Museum air. The 1928 building spent decades storing teenagers and their ambitions. Now it stores a town government and a brand-new gym. Farmington Storage stores everything else — at institutional grade. 📦 farmingtonstorage.com | 860.777.4001
Peter Mastrobattista sat at the head of the table Monday night in a third-floor training room that did not exist six months ago, inside a building he once navigated as a high school student trying to stay awake in Spanish class.
"Every time I'm in this building," the chair of Farmington's Ad Hoc 1928 Building Committee told his colleagues, "I think I'm sitting around these walls looking outside during Spanish class."
The nostalgia was earned. The $16 million renovation of Farmington's original 1928 high school into the town's new Town Hall is, by every measure the committee discussed on March 24, essentially done. KBE Building Corp., the general contractor, is 97 percent expended. Silver Petrucelli + Associates, the architect, is at 100 percent. The punch list — the industry term for the last incomplete or incorrect items — should be fully resolved within a month.
The committee's agenda Monday was not about what still needs to be built. It was about what comes next: a ribbon cutting, a public tour, wayfinding signs for people who keep parking on the wrong side of the building, and the question of what to do with the town hall annex they just vacated.
May 14, 6 P.M.
The committee settled on Thursday, May 14 as the date for the ribbon cutting ceremony. Start time is 6 p.m. — chosen, as Assistant Town Manager Kathryn Krajewski noted, so "people don't have to rush home from work."
The ceremony itself will run 15 to 20 minutes. After that, the building opens for guided tours.
The tour route highlights what Krajewski called "the cool spots" — the renovated lobby, the new gymnasium and fitness studio that expand Farmington's recreational offerings, the town clerk's office and its new vault, the second-floor development wing, and the third-floor training room where the building committee was sitting Monday night. Town Manager Kathleen Blonski said the event will include food trucks and the distribution of souvenir bricks to residents who purchased commemorative bricks during the project's fundraiser — a campaign that raised significant money for a scholarship fund.
Committee member Daniel Kleinman, calling in from out of state, noted that his flight home from Florida lands May 13. The committee chose the 14th anyway. A custom ribbon is being ordered. Krajewski reported that the oversized scissors are already in her office.
No rain date is needed. The gym is the backup.
Krajewski's team will promote the event through the April town newsletter, Friday school folders, and a press release. A sign-up form will help with parking logistics; the high school ribbon cutting required overflow parking and shuttle buses.
Signage, Furniture, and the People Who Keep Parking on the Wrong Side
The building may be finished, but the experience of arriving at it is still a work in progress.
Blonski told the committee that interior wayfinding signs are needed at the ends of hallways — residents reach the building's corridors and don't know which direction leads to the town clerk. Outside, people continue parking on the high school side of the complex, where there is no public entrance to the town hall. A temporary A-frame sign is going up immediately. Permanent exterior signage will be quoted separately from the construction contract to avoid change-order pricing.
Blonski also announced plans for a campus map in the upcoming town newsletter, showing the full municipal complex — the new town hall, the administration building, the town hall annex, and social services — with building names, addresses, and what's inside each one.
"People are not certain of the terms," Blonski said. "We now have the administration building for the school, the town hall is here, the town hall annex, social services there."
On furniture, Krajewski reported $140,000 in the current capital budget, with another $100,000 to $200,000 projected in the seven-year capital plan. The approach is phased: public-facing areas first, then office replacements. Signage, she noted, is currently higher on the priority list than new desks.
The Numbers
The project's contingency stands at $48,212.41 — 80 percent of the original contingency has been spent. Forecasted change orders total approximately $96,200, though Krajewski emphasized those are worst-case figures currently being negotiated downward with KBE. No new change orders are expected.
The committee approved five change orders Monday, the most notable being a $30,900 credit — the return of unused trade allowances for roof wood decking and temporary utilities that the project never needed. They also approved invoices including $432,324.53 to KBE for February work and $76,419.90 to Iappuccio, the site work contractor that has remobilized and is working daily on exterior finishing.
The committee then voted to approve $46.26 for Bluetooth adapters. Krajewski described it as "a big ticket item."
Worth noting: the Farmington High School project's 282 change orders — covered by The Farmington Mercury earlier this month — are a separate project from the 1928 Town Hall renovation, though both involve the same campus.
What's Next
The April 14 committee meeting has been canceled. The next meeting is April 28, when the committee will finalize the ribbon cutting program.
The town hall annex, now fully vacated, is on hold. Council Liaison Dave Wlodkowski reported that the council has paused repurposing discussions, with a new ad hoc committee expected to study the annex's future this budget cycle.
The building committee's work, meanwhile, is entering its final phase. One year of warranty coverage begins when the punch list closes. After that, the committee that oversaw a $16 million referendum and the transformation of a 1928 high school into a functioning town hall will have completed its charge.
Peter Mastrobattista will have to find another building to sit in and remember Spanish class.
— Jack Beckett filed this from the 1928 building's third-floor training room, which is a sentence that would have confused everyone in Farmington two years ago. The coffee was provided by whatever Devin brought. The change orders were provided by KBE. ☕
The Farmington Mercury covers the town nobody else is covering — the building committee that just spent $16 million turning your old high school into the place where you'll renew your dog's license, the ribbon cutting you'll attend in May, and the forty-six dollars in Bluetooth adapters in between. We publish slowly, deliberately, and without apology. Find us at farmingtonmercury.com and tell your neighbors. #WeAreFarmington 📰