Municipal projects make important and long lasting improvements to a town. Among a town’s decision makers, as we all know, there are always going to be many and opposing opinions on what an “improvement” actually is. Board and committee members’ experience with construction and planning will vary widely and members will come and go, often taking their institutional knowledge with them.
At Cotton Design, we have experience with all this and have found a process that works well for all concerned parties. First, we’ll ask the department head to create the parameters of an ideal building. These are made as recommendations to the town government which then presents these ideas to the residents, who can then air their opinions and have their questions answered. We’ve found that the more involved that we, the designers, are in this process, the smoother the process will go.
We take all that input and work with the department to create a design proposal to present to the town for a vote, which often includes funding decisions.
As town politics are ever-changing, our team at Cotton Design can serve as the bearers of institutional knowledge. We act as a knowledge base for the current town government to sort through all the opinions and conflicting ideas to arrive at the best solution for the town.
We have been working with towns to navigate this process for 20 years. We take a huge amount of pride in helping to create buildings that serve entire communities and leave a legacy for future generations.
To get started, send us an email or give us a call at (802) 365-7277.
We look forward to hearing from you.
The Town of Wilmington, VT
The Town of Wilmington would like to express its gratitude to Cotton-Belaski Architectural Service and Ingram Construction for your services designing and building the new Wilmington Highway Garage and salt shed. As you are aware, this project has been discussed and planned for nearly two decades.
So we are pleased to have it done with the help of your services during design, bond approval, contracting and the construction process.
The building proved to be very air-tight and achieved a CFM50 rating of 3,000 CFM at 50 pascals.
That is exceptionally tight and highly indicative of good design and construction. The building was submitted to the Efficiency Vermont Better Buildings by Design competition and narrowly missed winning an award.
No project is without challenges and we had our fair share, including some change orders. I want to personally thank David, Paul, Steve, Scott and Jeff for working through the issues in a professional manner and with integrity. As of the writing of this letter a few items remain to be addressed, but we are confident they will be, as has been our experience.
I would recommend your collective services to others and would be happy to personally speak with anyone considering doing so.
Sincerely,
Chuck Clerici, Chairman, Wilmington Garage Committee
The Town of Newfane
“Cotton Design has gone above and beyond to ensure that the needs of the whole town (employees and public alike) will be met long in the future. Robin and David were helpful, knowledgeable and easy to work with.”
Shannon Meckle, Administrative Assistant, Town of Newfane
