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Plans for the Town of Cutler Bay’s Legacy Park and Municipal Complex Project have moved forward.
At the Mar. 15 Town Council meeting the number of architectural firms responding to an RFP (request for proposals) had been narrowed down to three shortlisted designers. The finalists were Bermello Ajamil & Partners, MCHarry Associates and Saltz Michelson Architects.
At the meeting representatives of each firm made presentations including artwork of their proposed design for the complex. Members of the town council asked questions about each design approach concerning such things as parking and quick access for the Policing Unit.
During the regular town council meeting on Mar. 22 the council made its final selection of the architectural firm to work with for the project. Relatively few residents attended the meeting in person but some did attend via zoom.
Emma Jones with Stantec, a consulting company, explained the process.
“I just wanted to say thank you to all three firms for such a great effort. The town council will present their completed scorecard to the town clerk,” Jones said. “Those scores will be tallied and the firms will be ranked highest to lowest based on their cumulative scores and then the final firm will be selected and announced this evening. The project approach has a maximum value of 10 points, the design concept has a maximum value of 50 points and the interview has a maximum value of 40 points, for a total of 100.”
Vice Mayor Michael Callahan was the first to speak.
“All three were extremely impressive,” Callahan said. “BA and Partners did a good job with the overall presentation. I just had some concerns with their parking garage, with the circulation of the traffic within the park itself, and I wasn’t satisfied with the answers to my question. I think they did a great job with space planning. They were one of the only firms that provided space planning.
“MCHarry Associates also did a very fine job. I liked a lot of their concepts; I just found that the substance overall, there was things missing. I didn’t see a lot of representation in their presentation of what our public comments were that came out of all of the meetings.
The one that I liked and that I ranked No. 1 was Saltz Michelson Architects.”
Councilmember Suzy Lord shared her thoughts.
“The MCHarry project was very good,” she said. “I liked it a lot, but for me it lacked some of our town feel. It lacked a little bit of what I wanted to see and that I saw in the other two projects a little bit more substance. It was a nice project; it just didn’t wow me.
“The BA firm I really like their project a lot. I had some reservations with the placements of the buildings being further apart. I like the Saltz project the best. There was that ‘wow’ factor looking at the renderings. It looks like it would be cohesive with other projects that have come before us that are going to be developed within town. I like the branding.”
Councilmember Richard Ramirez had similar views about the quality of all the designs, but differed on his favorite.
“Overall I went with MC Harry as my No. 1 choice.”
Councilmember Robert “BJ” Duncan expressed concern about the Saltz design not including a parking garage, but thought that could be worked out.
“My No. 1 will be Saltz. My No. 2 will be B&A and my No. 3 will be MCHarry.”
Mayor Tim Meerbott agreed that the parking garage issue could be worked out without it costing more than the planned total project price.
“It could be less than $37 million,” Meerbot said. “Some components of this may have some additional funding sources such as the pool coming from ARPA. I scored Saltz No. 1, and scored BA and MCHarry No. 2.”
That brought the overall score to four for Saltz Michelson and one for MCHarry. The council voted unanimously to have a contract drawn up with Saltz Michelson. That will still have to be voted on, and there will still be public workshops in which residents can provide their input for the final design. Town manager Raphael Casals said that a dedicated web page for the project would be created for residents.
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