Designs revealed for Norwalk's new Cranbury Elementary School
Richard Chumney
NORWALK — The new Cranbury Elementary School will include at
least 21 classrooms and feature a separate cafeteria and gymnasium, according
to design plans recently unveiled by city officials.
Plans for the new school were presented last week to the
Norwalk Planning Commission, which unanimously voted to approve the $45 million
construction project.
Alan Lo, the city’s building and facilities manager, said
construction of the two-story building is scheduled to begin next spring. The
school is slated to open in September 2023.
“The goal here is to build a new school while the existing
school is still in operation,” Lo said. “It’s a very exciting project for the
community and the city.”
The new school will replace the existing facility, which was
originally built in 1959. For years, parents have complained that parts of the
62-year-old building have fallen into disrepair and that the community has
outgrown its cramped classrooms and hallways.
The school system initially considered renovating the
building and constructing an addition to house a new cafeteria. But after the
cost estimates for the expansion exceeded expectations, district and city
officials decided to replace the aging structure with a larger facility on the
same site.
Lisa Yates, an architect with the Bridgeport-based firm
Antinozzi Associates, which was hired by the city to design the new school,
said the new building will be erected on athletic fields adjacent to the
existing school.
The new building will be served by two vehicle drop-off
loops. The first loop will be available to school buses and a second larger
loop will be available to parents. Yates said the added drop-off locations will
help prevent traffic from building up on Knowalot Lane during peak hours.
Once construction of the new building is complete, the old
school will be demolished to make way for the vehicle drop-offs. The current
designs call for a baseball field to be installed in the center of the larger
loop.
The school will not be served by the city’s sewer system.
Instead, an upgraded septic system will be installed along with the new
building, according to Philip Katz, an engineer with the firm Stantec.
Yates said the building’s facade, which will feature floor-to-ceiling windows made up of entry-resistant glass, will incorporate stone, brick and wood to reflect the “park-like nature” of the surrounding area. The school site is located in a largely wooded area just south of Cranbury Park.
“It’s the kind of space where you like to be outside, so we
like to have this feeling of bringing the outside in,” Yates said.
The building’s first floor will include a nearly
2,000-square-foot cafeteria, a 4,700-square-foot gymnasium, two music rooms, an
art room and a learning commons. There will also be space for a preschool, and
as well as classrooms for kindergartners, first graders and second graders.
The second floor, meanwhile, will include nine classrooms
for third- fourth- and fifth-graders. There will also be six resource rooms to
house various programs, including English as a second language classes and
gifted and talented courses.
If extra classroom space is needed in the future, Yates
said, one of the music rooms on the first floor and several resource rooms on
the second floor could be converted into traditional classrooms.
“Because of the way this school is used, we think it’s
important to have it be flexible and modular,” Yates said. “It allows them to
have their needs be met during a particular year, or in 10 years if things
change. It’s really just future proofing the building.”
West Haven looks to 'enhance the education experience' with new Washington School
Brian Zahn
WEST HAVEN — In 1909, Yale University graduate William Taft
was inaugurated as the 27th president of the United States, the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People was founded and West Haven’s
Washington Elementary School was built.
Although both the presidency and the NAACP continue to exist
today uninterrupted, local officials said 112 years of continuous usage is too
long for a school building that once was considered an innovator for its use of
coal-fired hot water boilers.
“In the past 112 years, Washington School should have been
rebuilt three times,” said Ken Carney, chairman of the city’s Building
Oversight Committee.
Carney on Monday provided a concept plan for a new
Washington Elementary School, to be built on the same site as the current
school at 369 Washington Ave. The project, which officials estimate to cost
around $38 million, would be supplemented by $24 million in state bonding
through a school construction reimbursement program.
According to state Rep. Dorinda Borer, D-West Haven,
chairwoman of the state legislature’s Finance, Revenue and Bonding Committee’s
Bonding Subcommittee, rebuilding the K-4 school has been a top priority for her
since being elected to the General Assembly.
“This building is over 100 years old, with no elevators and
bathrooms in the basement,” she said.
As a result, the building raises serious accessibility
concerns, she said.
Fourth-grade students on the verge of promotion to fifth
grade said the issues go even deeper.
“This school is kind of old. The (air-conditioning) doesn’t
really work,” said Jayce Peluso.
“Some of the lights are broken and there’s some cracks,”
added Jose Rangel.
Jayce said that, before he moves onto middle school, his
fondest memories of his education thus far are of his teachers. He said he
believes they deserve a new building.
Carney said a new, two-story building would be built farther
back on the property, allowing for a bus loop to ease the flow of traffic.
Traffic on Washington Avenue is one of city Councilwoman Bridgette Hoskie’s
biggest concerns.
“Hopefully it’s going to help with the traffic, because you
can’t get by here. It’s borderline unsafe,” she said.
Carney said the city also will hire a traffic consultant to
ensure that the area is safer for pedestrians and has improved traffic flow.
The building has been approved for about 42,000 square feet
and would have air-conditioning, be compliant with the Americans with
Disabilities Act, feature energy-saving fixtures and wireless internet. Before
breaking ground, Carney said the city’s building committee first must select an
architect, which it is narrowing from nine applicants.
Although Carney said the current school is larger than
42,000 square feet, but much of the inerior space is wasted and serves no
purpose.
Superintendent of Schools Neil Cavallaro said the city long
has had a vision of rebuilding its schools instead of making “piecemeal” fixes.
“If we want our kids to compete, they need the best and they
deserve the best,” he said. “We need to do better for our kids. A lot of people
love this building and it’s going to be difficult to see it torn down, but it
just doesn’t meet the needs of our staff and students.”
According to Carney, the building will remain functional for
about two years after the city breaks ground on the new project, before being
torn down.
Washington Elementary would be the latest school to be newly
constructed following completion of a
new West Haven High School.
Board of Education Chairwoman Cebi Waterfield said the new
Washington Elementary would support the city’s vision of schools as community
centers — buildings that serve as “the anchor” for the local neighborhood.
Kim Kenney, president of the city’s PTA, said the new school
ultimately would support the fostering of deeper relationships between school
staff and the community.
“This is a huge undertaking and I’m so excited to see it
become a reality,” she said.
Washington Elementary Principal Twana Shirden has served on
the construction committee for the new building since its inception, although
she will be leaving the district for a new job at the end of the school year.
“I think it’s phenomenal. The students and staff are deserving
and it’s well overdue,” she said. “A modernized building will enhance the
education experience.”
Cabinet secretaries launch roadshow to sell the Biden plan
Ashraf Khalil
WASHINGTON (AP) — Marty Walsh remembers what it was like
when a Cabinet secretary would come to town.
“It really is a big deal. They give you the dates, and you
just clear your schedule,” said Walsh, a former mayor of Boston.
He recalls 300 people packing into a room to hear Julián
Castro, then Housing and Urban Development secretary. "He was speaking on
behalf of President Obama and Vice President Biden, and people hung on every
word.”
Now Walsh, as secretary of labor, is on the other side of
the equation, crisscrossing the country on behalf of President Joe Biden’s
American Jobs Plan. As the massive infrastructure package goes through
torturous negotiations in Congress, Walsh and a handful of other Cabinet
secretaries have launched an ambitious travel schedule to promote the plan and
the larger Biden agenda.
“It’s clear the administration has decided to take their
message on the road,” said Ravi Perry, head of the political science department
at Howard University. “The amount of trips, how much they’ve traveled ... there
really has been a shift.”
Starting around the beginning of May, Biden's Cabinet
members have made dozens of TV appearances and trips around the country,
promoting the Biden agenda with an ambitious roadshow.
“I don’t know that I can think of an equivalent to this kind
of rollout,” said HUD Secretary Marcia Fudge, who in recent weeks has traveled
to Newark, New Jersey; Kansas City, Missouri; and Tulsa, Oklahoma. “We are an
extension of the administration. We are carrying the president’s agenda.”
That agenda stands at a critical crossroads as the
infrastructure package faces a unified bloc of Senate Republicans, who decry it
as excessive and unnecessary. Meanwhile some Senate Democrats remain leery of
using their slight numbers advantage to force the package through without some
bipartisan support.
Last week, Biden called off negotiations with a group of
Republican senators and announced he would be formulating a new approach. The
bill is Biden's top legislative priority and its fate could prove critical to
his ability to maintain momentum early in his administration. With simmering
issues such as voting rights reform, police brutality, immigration and gun
control on the agenda, Biden's ability to deliver on his proposals is being
closely watched by both Republicans and the Democrats' own restless progressive
wing.
The Cabinet outreach campaign is particularly striking in
the context of the country's gradual emergence from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Although restrictions on mass gatherings are being lifted all around the
country, several Cabinet secretaries noted that the national mood is not quite
ready for large political rallies.
“You’re not getting the crowds, of course," said Walsh,
who misses the intimacy of working lunches without social distancing
restrictions. “It really restricts what you can do. You want to be around
people.”
Much of the traveling has been done by Biden's Jobs Cabinet:
Walsh, Fudge, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Energy Secretary
Jennifer Granholm and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo.
Buttigieg, who said he was “itching to get on the road since
Day One,” said the presence of a Cabinet secretary brings particular gravitas.
More than perhaps any position in government, he said, Cabinet secretaries are
a direct extension of the president and his policies.
“You represent the administration and the president, writ
large,” said Buttigieg, who has traveled to North Carolina, Georgia and
Tennessee. "It’s a way to let people know that they’re important.”
A former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, Buttigieg recalled,
“It was a pretty big deal if a regional administrator for a federal agency came
to town, much less a Cabinet secretary.”
The campaign is proceeding with active coordination from the
White House. Fudge said her department plans her travel schedule, but the White
House regularly makes requests for her to appear in certain places or arranges
for her to team up with another secretary for a joint appearance. Biden
announced the informal Jobs Cabinet grouping in April, telling reporters that
the quintet would be asked “to take special responsibility to explain the plan
to the American public."
Anita Dunn, senior adviser to Biden, said the Cabinet
members had largely been confined to long-distance television interviews for
the first few months of the administration.
“It’s all been virtual until quite recently,” she said.
Dunn described the Cabinet members as "accomplished
people who represent the administration and allow us to increase our reach.”
It also helps that several of the secretaries are former
mayors, like Buttigieg and Walsh, or former governors like Granholm and
Raimondo, enabling them to find easy common ground with local officials and
stakeholders.
“That's a huge advantage for the administration,” Dunn said.
The logistics and cost of planning a secretary's visit are
also far less daunting than they would be for the president or vice president.
Dunn said the secretaries travel on a mixture of government planes and
commercial airlines, and Cabinet secretaries have their own security details,
but not Secret Service protections. As a result, the administration can get the
impact of a direct presidential emissary for far less cost and hassle.
In some cases the secretary's role is to rally sympathy and
momentum; in others they seek to reassure nervous audiences in deeply
Republican states that the Biden agenda won't leave them behind.
Granholm, speaking on the phone during a visit to West
Virginia, said her primary goal on that trip was to reassure citizens of the
coal mining-dependent state that Biden's clean energy plans won't destroy their
economy. A former governor of Michigan, Granholm compared West Virginia to her
home state when the auto industry started contracting.
“I get that fear and nervousness when a state’s whole
identity and economy is wrapped around a sector that’s shrinking. I get when a
community has been on its knees,” she said.
Her presence in West Virginia “means that the president of
the United States deeply cares," Granholm said.
The approach represents a direct departure from the previous
administration. Former President Donald Trump's Cabinet secretaries did their
share of pre-pandemic speaking engagements, but Trump generally preferred to be
his own messenger and promoter through Twitter, interviews with sympathetic
media outlets and famously raucous rallies with himself as the centerpiece.
“It's a huge shift in how Cabinet members are being used by
the president,” Perry said. “What we’re seeing here is a much more
decentralized executive branch. In some ways, it’s a return to normalcy in
terms of domestic diplomacy.”
City of Bristol, Board of Education holding beam signing ceremony for Arts Magnet School
BRISTOL – The City of Bristol and the Bristol Board of Education are inviting the Bristol community to come out for the Memorial Boulevard Intradistrict Arts Magnet School Beam Signing Ceremony Wednesday.
During the ceremony the public will be able to sign their name on the final support beam for the new building.
“This is a milestone in the renovation and restoration of the Memorial Boulevard building,” said Deputy Superintendent Michael Dietter, chairman of the project’s building committee in a release. “Members of the building committee, D’Amato+Downes, and QA+M Architecture welcome all community members to join us in celebrating this moment.”
The ceremony will also include updates on the construction progress and timeline.
The Memorial Boulevard Intradistrict Arts Magnet School will open in 2022, grades six through eight will attend fulltime at the new campus. Students in grades nine to 12 will take their academic core requirements at their home high school and then choose a pathway of electives to take at the magnet school.
“All students will receive discipline-based academic coursework during half of each day,” said Dietter in a previous interview.
Arts magnet courses will include creative construction; visual arts; musical arts; television, video and theatrical production; entertainment, sports and event management; and marketing and communications.
The ceremony will begin at 4:15 p.m. and all attendees are being asked to use the construction entrance off South Street. Once parked, you will need to report to the construction trailer.
Kenneth R. Gosselin
HARTFORD — A dreary, but prominent corner of Pearl and
Trumbull streets in downtown Hartford — notable for a clock tower that hasn’t
worked in years — is getting a makeover as the city pushes beyond the pandemic,
aimed at attracting people to spend time at the corner, not just cross through
it.
The owners of the 100 Pearl St. office tower and the
building’s signature tenant, Hartford HealthCare, are partnering on the
upgrades that will include the installation of a glass “cube” patterned after
Apple’s on Fifth Avenue in New York, intended to signal Hartford HealthCare’s
commitment to innovation.
The improvements are part of a larger, up to $24 million
renovation planned for the two-towered office building joined by an atrium. The
costs are being split by Hartford HealthCare, the parent of Hartford Hospital
and six others in Connecticut and building landlord, Shelbourne Global
Solutions LLC, of Brooklyn, New York.
The upgrades for the plaza include the removal of concrete
planters that will be replaced by a landscaped plaza enclosing a new seating
area with posts that will provide illumination at night. The clock tower will
be repaired so it will once again show the time. It also is possible there will
be an LED video wall displaying health-related messages from Hartford
HealthCare.
The health system’s name and logo will be displayed
prominently in several places on the building.
The improvements are now getting underway and are expected
to be completed in October.
The upgrades “make the streetscape into an inviting area,
modernize the building while using historic components,” said Ben Schlossberg,
managing member of Shelbourne, downtown’s largest commercial landlord.
Jeffrey Flaks, Hartford HealthCare’s chief executive, said
Friday the investment in 100 Pearl St. is an example of the health system’s
goal to invest in cities it serves to strengthen urban corridors, with health
care becoming an economic driver.
The partners announced plans for 100 Pearl St. just before
COVID-19 struck last spring. The plans included Hartford HealthCare leasing
80,000 square feet with an option for another 30,000 square feet, a boost to a
building that had previously suffered from high vacancy.
Hartford HealthCare also said it intended to bring 700
workers downtown to the building, the largest number for its “access center”
that will eventually coordinate patient care and schedule appointments across
Hartford HealthCare’s 400 locations in Connecticut. Of the 700, about half were
expected to be new hires, mostly for the access center.
The pandemic slowed down plans for the building. But, as of
Friday, about 230 employees of the health system now were assigned to the
building. Those employees also included members of Hartford HealthCare’s legal
department and the office that manages vendor agreements.
“We will continue to bring in a strong workforce to the city
of Hartford,” Flaks said. “It is about bringing economic vitality to the city
and the region.”
One change from initial announcement is that Hartford
HealthCare will keep its “venture studio” at the main Hartford Hospital campus
off Seymour Street, rather than bringing it to Pearl Street. Flaks has said
there will still be plenty of innovation at 100 Pearl St. with at its access
center.
The center follows on the health system’s $250 million
investment over the last decade putting all its health records into one
electronic system across its hospitals, primary care offices, home care,
rehabilitation, behavior health and urgent care.