Travis County Commssioners Court
October 15, 2002
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Item 15
15 to consider approval schematic design for the north rural community center and clinic at Pflugerville, and take appropriate action.
>> alicia perez, executive manager of -- of operations. Schematic design for the north rural community center. Clinic located in Pflugerville. The original budget or the project budget is about $3.2 million. 2.2 of that for -- is for construction. The -- the rest of it is for professional fees, its and ffe and the move. You have purchased -- we have purchased a -- a property for about $700,000 on which the current -- the design clinic and community center will sit. It is due to open -- our move-in date is September of 03. This is really a great facility, I think, for that area. It will -- it will provide a clinic pharmacy and activity center where seniors -- that's used a lot by senior citizens for their luncheon program and also for activities. It -- it will have a food pantry, a clothes pantry, also, and it will have an area for public computers where individuals can come in and -- and use public computers. It will have adequate kitchen and is like, I said, quite an addition, I believe, for that community and -- and -- in precinct -- in -- Karen Sonleitner, precinct commissioner 2, would you like to add anything.
>> just that the folks in Pflugerville have been quite patient, we so appreciate that in terms of getting them in out of a rented facility that is wholly inadequate. Don't tell chief mullenberg but they regularly bust the fire code limits sometimes related to the senior luncheon program. We are trying to do the best we can. I just want to say how much I appreciate the work that facilities has done on this project in terms of taking the ideas that were brought forward by the Pflugerville board in terms of the kinds of things that would be necessary, working with health and human services about their particular needs, and if you -- if you get out the big drawings here, you will also see that some urban design concepts that were really -- that will really be the thought of mayor wenton up in Pflugerville have also been incorporated. The last thing they wanted was basically a big box in the middle of a field. So mayor wenton drew out on a napkin, with you thought about maybe pulling the building closer to the front, making it very pedestrian friendly so that they can incorporate sidewalks, this is a place that you actually want to attend and to also get -- they would also work with us because it's a very wide street on Pflugerville farms loop with turn-in parking in addition to the parking in the back. And they really took those ideas and went forward and have given us some wonderful things here. In addition to the tax office was also very well thought out in terms of making sure that there's a covered dropoff area for folks that are coming through carts and other places, but also that you can have a drive-up related to the tax office and be able to do your business there. This is going to be a facility that I think people are going to be extraordinarily proud of. I just want to say thank you again to facilities and the whole team for the amount of work that you have committed to us. Dusty thank you for your input on this. The city of Pflugerville is extraordinarily excited about this proposal and again it's going to be a -- to be a building project up there that will reflect the vision of that community about having very pedestrian friendly kinds of gathering places for the community.
>> the residents out there, have been understanding and patient for years, we appreciate that.
>> yeah.
>> questions or comments.
>> we would like to give you a little run down on the project from the project manager. Just let you know that we are very proud of this project. We did this in-house, all of the architectural design it's done in house in facilities management. We are only consulting services for [inaudible] construction on this project.
>> okay.
>> could you come up to the microphone.
>> good morning, I'm the project manager for this project with facilities management. Just to go through these drawings real quickly with you. As commissioner Sonleitner was saying, we have brought the building over here closer to the corner. This is the overall site right here, which is according to this little area map here, half a mile east of i-35, right off of 1825 the main thoroughfare through the middle of Pflugerville. We are just a few blocks from the existing facility over here on windemere, so it should be fairly easy for people to find the new place. We are still leaving half of our site vacant for who knows what we might want to do in the future. They would like maybe some recreational fields here maybe in the future for the facility. So we basically have designed it with kind of like two front doors where you can -- people can park on the street and they can approach in a more pedestrian friendly passion here through this entry. Also people can park on the -- our off street parking back here, we also have in essence a front door through this way, also, through a courtyard garden area. And we have the dropoff right here for the carts for the people who want to come to the senior lunch program. The overall facility is kinds of broken up into what -- this is kind of the activity area down here and support areas for activities. Also the tax office is right here. Kind of like a separate building. Over here we have the community center itself and w.i.c. Will be mainly in this area and then the clinic will be in this area. They are joined by a common lobby. So -- I will show you the -- the closeup of the floor plan here. You have to turn your brains about 90 degrees because this building actually the corner is out here. So here's the entry from the corner into the lobby, or you can park down here and enter through this way. So the main lobby, accesses the waiting room here, the waiting room here for the community center, waiting room here for the clinic. This is the clinic area over here. This is the community center and w.i.c. Area. Again the activities areas with the kitchen, storage facilities, we took the restroom requirements and kind of broke them up into two areas. So that we have a -- a flexibility and -- in providing restrooms, kinds of, you know, at different areas on the site. And yet both would be accessible at any time for anybody. Again here's the tax office down here at the end. We have some kind of covered outside walkways to help us with circulation, also, also gives a nice feel to this courtyard area where they can also do community garden ifs they want to hear. This can be used however the users in the facilities would like to use this area. And then just this gives you kind of a -- an idea of the concept of the feel, how we want it to look. We are -- we are planning on putting a -- putting pitched roofs on it. At this point we are hoping that we can afford metal roofs. The fall-back position would be more medium or heavy laid kind of an asphalt shingle type of roof that will last 25 to 30 years. The city of Pflugerville requires all masonry exterior construction on the outside walls, so all of the walls will be some combination of brick or concrete units, masonry units and maybe stucco for the upper part of the tower here. So -- so anyway, that's -- that's the project in a nutshell. I can provide additional details if anybody is interested. Right now we have 52 parking spaces which -- designed on the site which makes the Pflugerville city -- which meets the Pflugerville city requirements.
>> how many?
>> 52.
>> how many do we need?
>> wl, 52 to meet lugerville refresh my memory. Are you talking to meet our requirements?
>> meet the demand, I assume that we will have staff, clients, are we basically relying on as much on street parking as the parking lot parking?
>> we don't know what they will be providing in the way of onstreet parking. I guess the mayor mentioned to the commissioners that they might provide angled parking, as I understood it. As I talked to the city official and manager a couple of weeks ago, they weren't aware of this idea. So this is apparently something Pflugerville is yet to formalize in their overall plan for this area. We believe that the 52 spaces that will be provided for and you have street parking will be plenty adequate for our needs. There is -- even if they don't have angled parking on the street, there's still lots of room for parallel parking on the street. So there's -- there's plenty of parking around the place.
>> certainly in terms of any kind of event that I have attended out at Pflugerville, there's a humongous parking lot, that's the one thing that we do have plenty of in terms at the windemere site, stephen help me out here, butian ever us remember -- remember us ever overwhelming a parking lot at an event at the Pflugerville site. A lot of folks that will be using this are coming via carts, coming with the senior lunch program, being dropped off by folks. But I don't think we have ever overloaded the parking lot out there.
>> the majority of our clients that frequent the senior luncheon program come via carts. Both for the late afternoon events and the senior luncheon program.
>> how many county completion work at the building? -- how county employees work at the willing, about?
>> -- at the building, about?
>> less than a dozen.
>> dusty says he will need --
>> I thought about that when you mentioned all of that vacant space next to the building. I guess that you can park along the grass out there if you need to, can't you?
>> if -- [multiple voices]
>> may I say something.
>> if need be.
>> , this is adequate parking -- building for the city of Pflugerville, also, for our need for our own and visitor. And we will get you the numbers as per the program. Also if we have to -- after we build this area, if we have to extend, you know, the parking, we have enough area right here to extend the parking in case we need it. This is, you know, that's what we -- what we anticipate if it's needed down the road we can increase that. [multiple voices]
>> what I?m looking for is based on the number of employees that we have and clients who came to the -- who come to the facility, 52 is sufficient?
>> plus that's not counting the on street parking, which would be considerable. Not only in front of them because we got six acres, but across the street as well. But we will be sensitive to making sure that there is sufficient space and please do not do any compact car. Nobody has compact cars anymore.
>> [ laughter ]
>> as we go through this process, I would like to congratulate staff and everyone for working on this on all of this rural clinic, the new ones and -- that are coming online. Stephen, I would like to make sure that whenever we enter into the -- an agreement, whenever that happens with the veterans administration to provide veterans services through the v.a. At our rural clinics, I want to make sure that what we are doing is actually in conformity with what they require. In other words, if they are looking at this and saying, well, blah blah blah blah, I think we need to look at a hand and foot operation here. They have their requirements, we are doing something here. I want to make sure that that is in the -- in the arena of things that we must ensure that we are doing to come into compliance with v.a. Requirements. I want to make sure that's happening. The question is is that happening? Because there will be nor than one rural clinic that will be affected if we actually go in that direction.
>> the design that you have before you --
>> yes.
>> -- the staff from the v.a. Actually participated in the development of the design.
>> good.
>> people from our community centers. We had the city of Austin staff that runs the clinic as well as the v.a. Staff involved in the preparation of this schematic design. So the -- some of the things that you see included, like there's pharmacy space, that assumes that we will have a pharmacy in there. So this meets all of their --
>> okay.
>> there are some things that they might prefer that are not actual requirements that might not be in here. We actually scoped this not counting on an increase in -- in the number of people that were -- that would frequent the site. One of the things that we had talked about was them actually paying us to increase the scope. And they weren't prepared to do that so therefore we didn't do it.
>> right.
>> but if you look at the design of the building and if you look at the amount of space that's on the site itself, we have the opportunities to expand in a variety of areas. So we talked about mhmr at one time and there's -- there's space, room on the site to actually expand. We were trying to meet your requirements and keeping this at a certain cost.
>> but with the expansion possibilities when needed, growth is going to continue to occur. So --
>> build into the site, yes.
>> we must look at how we accommodate growth. But I?m glad that you brought that up because I did not hear that the v.a., Veterans administration has actually gone through this. This is the first time that i've heard that.
>> yes, they have gone through this.
>> okay, thanks, that answers my question, thank you.
>> if there are no further questions, I would move approval of the schematic design and again thanks to the commissioners for an excellent example of collaboration and cooperation by all involved.
>> any more discussion? All in favor? That passes by unanimous vote.
>> yea!
Last Modified: Wednesday, April 2, 2003 10:25 AM