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With some good budget news and a flourish of an arm gesture, Dedham officials and residents celebrated the last steel beam being put into place on top of the new Avery School.
The Massachusetts School Building Authority’s executive director, Katherine Craven, joined Dedham’s superintendent of schools, town administrator, state representative and others for the “topping off” ceremony of the $23 million school, watching as the final girder was placed on the building. It was signed by every student at the elementary school, with each of the five panels representing a grade of Avery kids.
When the school is finished next year, “one of the crowning achievements of what we will have done at MSBA will be signified right here in East Dedham,” Craven said.
She said when she first came to the current Avery School in 2007, “I was shocked at the sort of facility that you had been maintaining for so long, and really trying to do the best you could. And it was really time for that 1921 building, with two bathrooms and a river running through the little girls’ room downstairs, and all of the issues with ADA accessibility – there was absolutely no way you could renovate that building.”
The School Building Authority is paying for just over half of the cost of the new three-story, 60,900-square-foot school, which was overwhelmingly approved by Dedham voters in a tax override more than a year ago. The steel frame building will have a brick façade and will serve 310 students.
East Dedham’s new elementary school, it will be visible to the neighborhood from the top of Pottery Lane. But it will also be close to Whiting Avenue and the high school – and last week’s brief ceremony was held on ground that will eventually be covered by a new artificial turf athletic field.
“This has been a project that goes back a long time, and we really are proud to be here, be part of it, support Dedham, and finally see that the Avery School, which was sort of medieval in its bearings, is replaced with this beautiful, modern new facility that’s going to be very uplifting,” Craven said.
Under the MSBA’s new “accelerated progress payment system,” her agency has already paid the town $1.7 million in reimbursement costs, she said.
School Building Rehabilitation Committee Chairman Andy Lawlor said the Avery is “well below our projected budget,” with “about $1.25 million worth of breathing space.”
With some good budget news and a flourish of an arm gesture, Dedham officials and residents celebrated the last steel beam being put into place on top of the new Avery School.
The Massachusetts School Building Authority’s executive director, Katherine Craven, joined Dedham’s superintendent of schools, town administrator, state representative and others for the “topping off” ceremony of the $23 million school, watching as the final girder was placed on the building. It was signed by every student at the elementary school, with each of the five panels representing a grade of Avery kids.
When the school is finished next year, “one of the crowning achievements of what we will have done at MSBA will be signified right here in East Dedham,” Craven said.
She said when she first came to the current Avery School in 2007, “I was shocked at the sort of facility that you had been maintaining for so long, and really trying to do the best you could. And it was really time for that 1921 building, with two bathrooms and a river running through the little girls’ room downstairs, and all of the issues with ADA accessibility – there was absolutely no way you could renovate that building.”
The School Building Authority is paying for just over half of the cost of the new three-story, 60,900-square-foot school, which was overwhelmingly approved by Dedham voters in a tax override more than a year ago. The steel frame building will have a brick façade and will serve 310 students.
East Dedham’s new elementary school, it will be visible to the neighborhood from the top of Pottery Lane. But it will also be close to Whiting Avenue and the high school – and last week’s brief ceremony was held on ground that will eventually be covered by a new artificial turf athletic field.
“This has been a project that goes back a long time, and we really are proud to be here, be part of it, support Dedham, and finally see that the Avery School, which was sort of medieval in its bearings, is replaced with this beautiful, modern new facility that’s going to be very uplifting,” Craven said.
Under the MSBA’s new “accelerated progress payment system,” her agency has already paid the town $1.7 million in reimbursement costs, she said.
School Building Rehabilitation Committee Chairman Andy Lawlor said the Avery is “well below our projected budget,” with “about $1.25 million worth of breathing space.”
With the job one quarter done, Lawlor said, “we’re about seven days behind the initial timeline we had, largely because of the heavy snowfall in January. But since we built in enough cushion in our timeline, we are on track” to move the students and staff over to the new building after April vacation next year.
“So we’re in a good place, both in schedule and construction. But we are mindful that no football team ever won a game because they were ahead after the first quarter,” he said. “We still have a lot of work to do, and we’ve got a great team in place – Consigli, Dore & Whittier, CMS – all working hard to get this project done on budget and on schedule.”
Lawlor also thanked the MSBA for its financial and technical support. This is the second project Dedham has done with the authority, after Dedham Middle School.
To cap the sunny spring morning, Lawlor asked Rita Mae Cushman – who he called “the heart of East Dedham” – to come up front and “direct the crane operator to place that girder to top off the structural steel for the school.”
She did so to applause, and she and Lawlor embraced as the crane lifted the girder into the sky, gently placing it on top of the Avery.
Cushman said that when Lawlor called her before the ceremony, she could not believe it.
“It was a shock,” she said. “It’s an honor.”
It’s too bad her father, Nick Civitarese, couldn’t see it, Cushman said.
“He would have been right in the front. And he would have been very happy to see this school finally being put up,” she said. “We’ve waited a long time.”
Dedham Transcript assistant editor Edward B. Colby can be reached at 781-433-8336 or ecolby@wickedlocal.com.
