By Joe Milliken
THE SHOPPER
BELLOWS FALLS, Vt. — The ongoing Bellows Falls Garage building project, a proposed housing project under the direction of the Brattleboro-based Windham Windsor Housing Trust, is set to begin this week, after it had recently been decided in a late-December Rockingham Board meeting that the demolition of the building had met all criteria.
This comes after the WWHT had previously announced alterations in the original plan to restore the former Bellows Falls Garage building located on Rockingham Street in the downtown area. WWHT had purchased the building from Frank Hawkins some two years ago.
The altered plan, with an estimated cost of $9.9 million, is to rebuild the one hundred-year-old building and create 27 affordable housing units, a shared community room, and a non-residential space on the street level.
“As we gained further insights on the cost of the restoration through the bidding process, we learned that [the original] approach was not feasible with the funding that was available to us,” said WWHT Executive Director, Elizabeth Bridgewater. “Therefore, we revised our plans and have developed a new approach that will restore the historic front of the building and remove the remainder of the structure down to the foundation.”
The revised approach for the rebuild will allow for a lighter building on the existing foundation, without having to restore the entire structure. In addition, it will allow for the historic representation of the original building – including the original building façade and wing walls – to remain intact.
“Our contractor has been onsite since late December and is currently working through all the preparations needed to begin taking the building down,” Bridgewater added. “This includes cleaning out the building and installing temporary bracing for some of the foundation elements that are remaining.”
Much of the ‘behind the scenes’ preparation has already been done to ensure a proper and safe demolition, and the building will be taken down in sections so that a wrecking ball will not be required. A safe plan, considering the garage structure sits close to other buildings.
“The removal of the first section of the building is scheduled to begin on January 31,” Bridgewater concluded.
The demolition of the smaller building at 88 Canal St. began on Monday, Jan. 24.
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