This September will be two years since a catastrophic fire burned down a large section of the Ewing Senior and Community Center. Now Ewing Township almost has all the pieces in places for the construction of a new center on the site.
The five-alarm blaze on Sept 30, 2022 destroyed the gymnasium and damaged many other parts of the ESCC, rendering the facility unusable.
Since then, the ESCC—a major hub for community activity—and outdoor facilities at the center have been closed, and most of the programs and offices, including Community Affairs and Recreation and the Senior Office, have been relocated to the Hollowbrook Community Center at 320 Hollowbrook Drive.
Ewing Observer editor Bill Sanservino recently sat down with Mayor Bert Steinmann to talk about various issues currently facing the township in 20 24.
The portion of the interview with the mayor focusing on the appointment of Aaron Watson’s appointment and the 2024 municipal budget ran in the April issue of the Observer and can be read online at communitynews.org.
The progress on the ESCC was the topic of discussion in this month’s section of the interview. An edited version of the interview appears below.
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Ewing Observer: What’s going on in town in terms of community and senior programs.
Bert Steinmann: We offer programs, especially to our seniors to stay active. It’s a little bit more difficult now because our senior center is in phases. We’re very fortunate in Ewing that we have a very cooperative Board of Education and School Board and a superintendent of schools who is allowing us space in the schools where we can accommodate some groups.
We’re using the gymnasium of Marie Katzenbach School. In Hamilton, thanks to Jeff Martin or the mayor over there, some members of our Pool Sharks group are now there for the time being. So, I’m very grateful for all these outside groups that have invited us with open arms, and that just shows you how tight knit the community is.
EO: You brought up the senior center. There was the fire there a while ago now, and you’re announced some plans for reconstructing that facility. Where do you stand now in terms of getting funding for that and also moving ahead with the project?
BS: We’re still actively going after funds, whether it’s federal funds or state funds or, just general funds that are out there that we can kind of get to. So far, I’ve been very fortunate that the State of New Jersey has given us $5 million towards the rebuild of that building. Mr. Watson (Business Administrator Aaron Watson) and I just went back to the state and had a conversation with the governor’s office about additional funding. We’re waiting for that to come through.
So, we’re very hopeful in that situation. I just got a letter from our congresswoman, Bonnie Watson Coleman. She was able to secure a million and $50,000, for the senior center. So, we’re moving in the right direction, and thanks to those groups, we can do that.
EO: What’s the total estimated cost for the project?
BS: Basically, the total estimated price for the rebuild of the community center, which would be from the ground up now, is $42 million. It’s a hefty price tag. But in today’s standards, it’s really not all that bad. I mean, when the original building was constructed back in 1992, it was a $6.5 million project, and people thought the end of the world was going to come.
We’ve got approximately 52,000 square feet here. This one is going to be 72,000 square feet. And so the price of that it’s pretty good compared to what it used to be. So we’re happy with that. Well, not happy, obviously. We still have to go out to bid and get the actual numbers.
But I feel because conditions have changed a little bit—the supply has been able to get freed up, and they’re not charging over-exorbitant prices now. The prices have started to come down, especially with steel and other stuff. I expect that the estimated price tag of $42 million may be lower than that. Obviously, that’s the hope that I have. You really never know.
As far as the design is concerned—the building has been designed. They’re just putting in the final touches and working with our Council members. I’m going to put the financial packages together over the next month and a half and start moving forward. I hope that we can put this project out to bid, sometime May or early June, with an approximate start date of September or October.
We should be taking advantage of our winter months because they haven’t been all that bad. The construction will take approximately between 18 to 24 months. So again, I think we’ll have a very useful and spacious building where we can do things now that we couldn’t do with the old building. We had to turn groups away constantly because we were at capacity. So now we have designed the building that for a better use, more groups can use it and we can offer more services to the community.
When I took over as mayor back in 2011, our population was around 34,000 plus. Right now, we’re at 38,000 plus and growing. As you can see, with the Ewing Town Center going up, and construction going around the township, we’re very busy and it reflects in our population. Believe it or not, we’re getting people from outside the area that love it here and the services that we provide. That’s why we really need this new community center to attract the younger families that are coming in, and also attract older individuals that need a place to go and need things to do. I think we’re accomplishing that with that new building.
EO: I know you were fighting with the insurance company to maximize the amount that you’re able to get from them. Do you know how much you will be able to get in terms of replacement costs for reconstruction of the building?
BS: Well, ironically, they’re offering us $18 million for the reconstruction of that building. They’ve paid out, I believe, $10 million so far. So, we’re still waiting for an additional $8 million. Obviously, that’s not going to cover the tab, and I don’t think that was fair from the insurance company. I’m outspoken as you well know. I’ve had a big argument with the insurance company when we were on the site, when the guy said, “Well you don’t need to tear the building down. There are things that you can save, and you could save some money. “.
I said to him, “You think I can rebuild this building for $18 million, even the way it stands today?” And they really don’t have an answer for that. And the other thing is that everything that we do today, I have to bring it up to code. I have to meet ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) requirements. There’s a host of things that we have to do that back in 1950 when this building was built, the codes weren’t that way, and now they are. We have to meet it.
The building was full of asbestos. Even the parts that were still able to stand. And we had to remediate all of that. So at the end of the day, the cost was very prohibitive even to try to rebuild what we had, and then we would build a building that wouldn’t be sufficient. I mean, why spend money on a building that you know isn’t going to meet the needs of the people?
It was an easy decision to say, “Okay, look, let’s just start from scratch.” We’re going to preserve the history of the building. It was built by the Jewish Federation (as the Jewish Community Center). We’re going to keep the cornerstone that they had and we saved the memento box that they had. We’re going to incorporate that back into the new building. I don’t want to lose sight of that.
Our architects, the DIGroup, looked at the original building, looked at the bathhouses and they incorporated the Kahn bathhouses (structures that were designed by noted architect Louis Kahn) in their design of the new building. It all just fits together. I’m very excited about it to be quite candid with you. I just really can’t wait to put a shovel in the ground.
EO: Initially you had hoped that you might be able to preserve parts of the building and then add on to it. Is that the plan anymore? Or have you just razed the whole site and are going to rebuild the whole thing.
BS: The whole site has been razed because once we got into that, a lot of problems appeared. The electrical service, the gas lines—all of that needed to be replaced. So all the mechanical stuff—that was gone. Those are your biggest expenses. So again, what you were able to save wasn’t worth saving, to be quite candid with you.
EO: How heavily was the center utilized by multiple facets of the community?
BS: It was in use every day from 6:30 in the morning when the Lawyers League—they used to have a basketball league— would come to the center and have pickup games with other lawyers. And that happened every day at 6:30 in the morning, that building would open, and we would not be out of that building until 9, 9:30, 10 at night. So that was a good 14 or 15 hours of activity going on in that building. More and more groups wanted to come there, but more and more groups had to be turned away, because we didn’t have the space.
With the new building, we’ve enlarged the gym, so that it’s basically a gym and a half. We can have other activities, not just one. People could be playing pickleball in a smaller section and have a basketball game or an indoor soccer game or whatever in the main gym. People wanted a walking track, and we’ve accomplished that. We put a walking track inside the gymnasium. It’s raised, so you can walk up there and see activities and what’s going on below.
Some individuals were clamoring about an indoor pool. We designed the building with an indoor pool. Unfortunately, when we looked at the size of the pool and the cost of the pool, it wasn’t worth the investment to go ahead and do it. All the related activity that they had to do to keep that pool running 24/7 wasn’t worth it. So that was scrapped.
We kept the black box theater in there, we kept the sound studio in there, although we’re going to go out for alternate bids on that and see where it fits into that $42 million. It’s not going to be anything fancy. We’re going to dumb it down a little bit, but it’ll still be for groups that want to be in that theater-type setting or a sound situation. We can have internships that go there, apprentice programs. Other groups could use that. So again, we’re trying to make sure that whatever activity is out there today that wasn’t there 10 or 20 years ago, we can accomplish it today. So that was the whole the whole idea about it.
EO: Many times, when the government proposes a project like this, they may have detractors out there who say, “They’re building a Taj Mahal. They’re overbuilding. They’re building a monument to themselves or monument to the architects.” How would you answer those types of criticisms?
BS: Believe it or not, not many people have said that. We had two public meetings. We’ll have another one when we present the plan to the planning board. We have to do a courtesy review to our planning board, so they’ll roll out the plan again. We had taken a lot of input from members of the public. The first time around, we had questions and answers and what people would like to see in the building, and that’s how we designed the building—what people wanted to see in it.
So, we wrote that all down on paper. Then we went into the functionality of the building. Then we went into the design of the building, and we put that all together. We had conceptual plans all drawn up. We rolled it back out to the public. Other than one or two individuals complaining about the swimming pool that we took that out, there was not a word. One of the questions, which was a very legitimate question, was, “What is that going to do for my taxes?”.
We sat down with our investors and the people that look at our overall strategy for bonding and things like that. They came up with the plan where we can borrow up to $27 million, if we need to, and that’s the top mark that I’m shooting for. I’m not going over that. There would be no tax increases. In fact, our debt service is actually dropping in the next year or two.
This will not lower the debt limit, but it’s not going to get it to a point where it sees significant tax increases. And what I like about the way we proposed this plan is that we still put in an additional $5 million a year in for things that we need in the town, whether it’s equipment, whether it’s trucks, whether it’s upgrades to our park system, whether it’s upgrades to some buildings. We have that built into that and it still will not affect the tax rate.
EO: And yes, interest rates have unfortunately been going up in the past few years. Generally, what is the rate that the township is paying on its on its bonds or borrowing power?
BS: About 3%. We’re very, very fortunate. Since I took over, we took an A- minus rating to AA stable, which is significant for around here. We’ve maintained that, and that’s thanks to my CFO (Joanna Mustafa). She really stays on top of things. She tells me, “We may have a situation here, let’s address it.” We’ve done that. So, we’ve stabilized that. We’re able to meet our debt limit. We were able to pay our bills as we go. We’re very fortunate in that respect. So again, it’s all about making sure that year over year, you do the prudent things and raise it where you need to raise it. We look at every corner of what we’re spending and where we can cut or where we may be at to have to add a few dollars. But, like I said, it’s been very stable over the last 13-plus years.
An architectural rendering of the reconstructed Ewing Senior and Community Center. The image was shown at an event on Aug. 14, 2023 conducted to celebrate the receipt of $5 million from the state towards the project.,
