DIGHTON — Town Administrator Michael Mullen and Library Building Committee Co-Chairs Ron O’Connor and Ken Pacheco are excited to announce that the Town’s library building project at 207 Main St., the newly-acquired Smith Memorial Hall, has been awarded a grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council’s Cultural Facilities Fund.
This week, MassDevelopment and Mass Cultural Council, the two state agencies that jointly administer the Cultural Facilities Fund (CFF), awarded the Town of Dighton a $200,000 CFF grant. This grant was one of 28 newly approved CFF grants investing a total of $3,139,000 into cultural facilities and projects throughout the Commonwealth.
The grant will fund the replacement of the building’s antiquated oil-fired forced hot air heating system with new high-efficiency electrical variable refrigerant flow (VRF) HVAC systems. The building’s existing floorplan configuration, with its multiple rooms and dispersed public areas, will benefit from installing precisely-sized VFR’s with new code-compliant ductwork as it will increase efficiency in the building.
The VRF HVAC systems recognize that different areas of the building will require heating and cooling needs at different levels and will adjust their operation accordingly. The features afforded with VFR systems also promote a more sustainable interior conditioning environment, ensuring building longevity while maintaining a healthy interior air quality. Additionally, the system compliments the building’s recent weatherization improvements.
“It’s impossible to express how important grant funding is to Dighton’s library building project, and this week’s grant award again reflects our continued progress in securing non-local funding to make this project a reality,” said Town Administrator Michael Mullen, adding that the town has now secured more than $1.2 million in state and federal funding to support the project. “Our success in being awarded this exciting grant is a direct reflection on the team that Dighton has brought together to advance this project, especially former Library Director Jocelyn Tavares and the staff from Granite City Partners, our project management team for the building project.”
The grant application, led by Tavares and Mullen, included letters of support from the Board of Selectmen; Dighton’s legislative delegation, including state Rep. Patricia Haddad and state Sen. Marc Pacheco; the Dighton Historical Society and the Dighton Cultural Council.
The CFF funding awarded to Dighton is expected to reduce the town’s reliance on the $323,000 Community Preservation Act (CPA) funding approved at Dighton’s June Town Meeting. The CPA funds were allocated to the project to complete the $700,000 proposed interior and exterior rehabilitation project at Smith Memorial Hall.
This project, which continues to receive broad-based support from a range of Dighton residents and partners, will also involve the restoration of features to the building’s curvilinear front entrance; the enhancement of building accessibility with the construction of a handicapped-accessible ramp to a new children’s area and activity room in the new library; the configuration of existing toilet areas into a new family accessible restroom; and new, historically appropriate code-compliant lighting and electrical upgrades.
The timing of Dighton’s grant application for the MCC Cultural Facilities Fund comes at an exciting and critically important time for the Dighton community. In July 2022, after receiving unanimous support from residents at Dighton’s Annual Town Meeting, the Town of Dighton utilized American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funding to purchase Smith Hall at 207 Main Street with a plan for the historic, culturally significant building to serve as the new home of the Dighton Public Library. At the same Annual Town Meeting in June 2022, residents also approved initial capital funding in the amount of $150,000 to fund building exterior restoration and weatherization work.
The acquisition of Smith Hall to serve as Dighton’s new library building marks the culmination of a more than 25-year-long effort marked by unsuccessful building rehabilitation and/or expansion proposals aimed at addressing building and life safety challenges at the Dighton Public Library’s original location at 395 Main St. These challenges have necessitated library operations to be temporarily relocated to the Town Hall campus and split between a modular unit and a lower-level town hall conference room during the last year-and-a-half.
Town officials recently engaged project management and architectural firms to begin the next construction phase of the project. Anticipated building occupancy, contingent on construction schedules and material availability, is currently expected for late 2024 to early 2025.
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