Though the town is trying to make the work site of a new elevator going in at Waveny House as inconspicuous as possible, the apparatus itself won’t be ready for use until late-summer, several months into the wedding season, according to new projections.
The first wedding at Waveny was scheduled for Saturday, April 18, and while the elevator next to the grand staircase in the main hall originally was supposed to be done April 1, “we are now looking at the end of July, the latest mid-August,” according to Parks & Recreation Director John Howe.
“So we’re going to be going through the whole spring wedding season where they’re going to be able to work during the week and then the whole place needs to be cleaned up and then they need to be out of there,” Howe told members of the Parks & Recreation Commission at their April 15 meeting, held at Lapham Center and via videoconference.
“The main thing of note for this group [Parks & Rec] is: That means we’ve had to cancel almost all meetings, events during the week so they can work. So any community organization that was planning to have a meeting there et cetera, we’ve had the fun task of having to call them and say, ‘Listen we can’t accommodate you.’ ”
The comments came during Howe’s regular update to the Commission.
Discussed for nearly a decade by municipal officials, the elevator had once appeared to be a priority for the town, which even created a Waveny House Renovation Advisory Committee to help plan for it. The Committee’s meeting minutes from October 2018 called for formal planning for the elevator to commence the following month for an early-2020 project completion. (Town officials in fiscal year 2018 had budgeted $1 million for the project, though it was to be bonded.)
Yet the elevator never materialized, and the Committee stopped meeting in 2019, town records show.
Then in October of 2022, the U.S. Department of Justice found dozens of “barriers to access” during an investigation into reported violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act. In a Site Survey Report that town officials—under a prior administration—had tried to withhold from public disclosure, the federal agency found that “[a]n accessible route is not provided to the Recreation Department on the second floor [of Waveny House].”
“A public entity shall operate each service, program or activity so that the service, program or activity, when viewed in its entirety, is readily accessible to and usable by individuals with disabilities,” Diane Perry, an architect in the DOJ’s Disability Rights Section, said in the report.
In late-2022, the town approved a $2.5 million contract for the elevator and an ADA-compliant bathroom.
Asked what is delaying the elevator project now, Howe said, “Multiple things.”
“The elevator was built, manufactured in California, shipped here,” he said. “There’s a different elevator company putting it together. The head guy for the elevator company is great, knows his stuff and probably has 40 years of installing elevators—he’s never done one like this. It’s a glass with a rounded main section, it’s cantilevered out. It’s just one thing after another. They had some problems with the motor. So the whole outside area has to be enclosed in glass. It’s a six-part painting process for the outside steel. So it’s not going as fast as [Recreation Office Manager] Bea [Watkins] and I would like, that’s for sure.”
(The Board of Selectmen had asked for an update on the elevator project during its regular meeting the prior week, on April 7, and at the time Bill Oestmann, the Department of Public Works’s superintendent of buildings, said, “I think by the end of April.”)
Howe told Parks & Rec, “When it’s all said and done, I think it’s going to fit in very nicely. Yes, it’s in the center staircase, it’s probably not perfect, but there’s no perfect place to put an elevator at Waveny House. So I think it’s probably the best location and I think it will look pretty good.”