Portion Of Fore River Clubhouse Open To Public

A portion of the Fore River Clubhouse is now available for the public to use as work at the historic Quincy Point building continues.

Ward 2 Councillor Anthony Andronico and Paul Hines, the city’s commissioner of public buildings, recently toured the clubhouse on Nevada Road to get a first-hand look work done to date.

“The building is 105 years old and was never properly cared for,” Hines said upon entering the building, noting the wood-framed structure sustained “a lot of termite damage” over the years and rotted in places.

The clubhouse had also been haphazardly renovated in the past, Hines added. Some columns inside the building were moved or removed, for example, while the exterior of the building was cut into in places.

The city has been working to renovate the building for several years and Hines said that as the city has worked to correct one issue, other ones pop up. “You do one thing and then you realize everything else that it triggers,” he said.

As one example, Hines noted the roof of the building had never been insulated before. That meant the city had to shore up the structure supporting the roof before adding insulation because the roof would not be able to hold snow in winter otherwise; snow simply melts off an uninsulated roof because of the heat from the building below.

In addition, Hines said that because the clubhouse is a public building, not a private one, any work done inside must be ADA compliant.

“In a public building, everything you do has to be accessible, no matter the cost,” he said.

A portion of the clubhouse, including the main lobby and the room with a fireplace located on the right-hand side of the building, is now back open to the public, Andronico said. In recent weeks, a family used the room for a child’s birthday party and the Quincy Public Schools used it as a staging area for the Quincy Multicultural Festival, which took place at the adjacent Fore River Field.

“It is a necessary space and to have it partially opens makes a difference,” Andronico said, adding that the community “is excited to have this space open to use.”

While the Department of Public Buildings is overseeing the ongoing work at the clubhouse, the use of the space is controlled by the Department of Natural Resources.

The lobby of the clubhouse has two new bathrooms and a temporary bathroom is open in the fireplace room. That bathroom will eventually be converted into a kitchenette so that both sides of the clubhouse would have a kitchen space. That means two separate groups could use the clubhouse at once, and both would have access to kitchen areas.

“You can have separate events in the two spaces so that more people can use it,” Andronico said.

The room on the lefthand side of the building, where a kitchen had been located, remains a work in progress. Hines said the next step in the process would be installing a new HVAC system in the building and after that is complete “you can start putting it all back together.”

Hines said he would likely seek to use community preservation funding to install the new HVAC system. Alternatively, he could seek to use federal Community Development Block Grant funds for the work.

Andronico added that is important to get the funding in place so that the work is done right to “make sure we’re not doing this again 20 years from now.”

The kitchen that had been located in the left-hand side of the building has been removed. Hines said the city has brought on a consultant to design a new kitchen for that space.

“It won’t be a full industrial kitchen, but we want something more than a hotplate,” he said.

Not only would the kitchen be available to the various groups who use the clubhouse, Hines said the new kitchen would also be important should the city decide to use the building as an emergency shelter. The clubhouse is not in a floodprone area, he noted, and is one of the few city-owned buildings in that section of Quincy.

A sprinkler system would have to be installed in the building before the city could use it as an emergency shelter, Hines added.

The left-hand side of the building includes a space formerly used by the now defunct Quincy Point Panthers football team. Hines suggested that area could one day be used a satellite senior center.

Andronico said he would like to see senior programming at the clubhouse, given that Ward 2 has the largest senior population in the city and that the Kennedy Center is on the opposite end of Quincy.

“Having senior programming in this part of the city is something I would like to accomplish,” he said.

Tom Clasby, the director of the Quincy Council on Aging, on May 30 told city councillors senior programming could return to the clubhouse as soon as this summer utilizing the already open portion of the building.

Work has also taken place in the basement of the clubhouse – where a boiler and coal shoot were removed and new control panels were installed – and on the second floor of the building.

The second floor of the clubhouse has additional space that could one day be used by the community. To keep the building ADA compliant, Hines said an elevator would have to be installed before the second floor could open to the public. The city will leave space available where an elevator could be installed in the future, but there are no plans to add one now.

Andronico said it would make sense to open both spaces on the first floor of the building and see how those are utilized before making a decision about the elevator.

The councillor said that he appreciates the work being done by the Department of Public Buildings to renovate the clubhouse.

“We had structural issues, asbestos, roof and chimney leaks, electrical, fire alarm, bathroom accessibility and ADA compliance...The list is so long,” Andronico said.

“We have been working on it. It’s taking a while to do but the reason is it is 105 years old.”

The work on the clubhouse so far has been financed by a $75,000 state appropriation, a $125,000 appropriation from the city’s community preservation fund, and a $500,000 federal CDBG grant, Hines said. He also noted that other items, such as exterior building materials, like windows, were donated for the project.