By Sara Withee
(July 16, 2026) – The Senior Center Building Committee, the architect and the project manager met in hybrid format on Thursday and discussed the details for bringing the project from the 95 percent construction drawings to 100 percent.
While the building committee discussed the process, the 95 percent drawings were not actually shown. These are currently in a digital format and the project manager agreed to send a print copy for the committee’s review.
This was a meeting with a lot of questions about details – about different types of drawings, insurance considerations and the committee reviewed a working draft of the cost estimate.
If we can pull out a point, just for the sake of sharing something, it’s this: the town has not chosen a building color yet. This comes when the general contractor comes on board, according to the meeting discussion. One of the building committee members asked this question.
Last October, Special Town Meeting approved an $11.55 million debt exclusion to help finance the $15.1 million project. A few days later, voters supported the project at a Special Town Election. There was a strong turnout at both votes; 287 voters checked into the town meeting and 1,031 residents voted at the special election (or 15.73 percent of the town’s registered voters). The Ayer Town Clerk’s office reported these numbers last Fall.
Since then, the Senior Center Building Committee has worked with the architect and project manager. The Planning Board has also reviewed the project, opening a public hearing in April and approving the Site Plan Review Decision and Major Stormwater Management Permit in June.
The new senior center will be located on about 3 acres off Bishop Road, near Devens and the Nashua River and the Oxbow National Wildlife Refuge. The site was subdivided from a larger lot (about 76 acres) of town-owned DPW land. The Planning Board endorsed the ANR (Approval Not Required) plan creating this at its March 24th meeting, according to the site plan review decision. See #3 on Page 3.