Steel Frame building and progress on Maplewood Cemetery site

At our last Feasiblity Committee meeting, most of our discussion focused on the possibility of a new library facility built on land leased from Maplewood Cemetery.

The Library Trustees have opened negotiations with Maplewood Cemetery to lease approximately 5 acres of land for 99 years. Everyone seems to think the lease is a good idea, now it is a matter of working out the details into something that could be presented at a Town Meeting.

We also started discussing some specifics of the possible building. Right now we are considering a 10,000 square foot building. A rough floorplan indicates that 10,000 square feet would provide adequate library space, although we had to remove some features that were included in our previous plans; such as the local history room and large meeting space.

One intriguing idea is being considered, which would be to purchase a pre-engineered steel frame building. These buildings are sold by a company that comes to the site and erects a building shell on a concrete slab, and you then have your own contractors install all the interior walls, heating and plumbing systems and so on.
Steel frame buildings can offer some significant savings over custom designed buildings.

The next step is for the committee to get cost estimates for everything other than the building shell so we can evaluate what the savings would be.

Do you have any experience with or opinions about pre-engineered steel buildings? It is not typical for a library to choose this sort of construction, so if anyone has input, we'd love to hear it!