Lowell Catholic begins construction on new academic building

The Lowell Sun

LOWELL — Lowell Catholic on Monday began construction of a new, 25,000-square-foot educational building with a ceremonial groundbreaking attended by school and city officials, students and alumni

The new building is being constructed behind Legacy Hall and will house a state of the art learning commons, classrooms, an expanded cafeteria, physics lab and administrative offices. Current building plans project a fully operational facility by the fall of 2019.

MassDevelopment announced earlier this year it issued a $10 million bond to finance the project.

The school is working with Gavin & Sullivan Architects and Charter Brothers Construction on the facility, which will mirror the look and feel of the other buildings on campus. The project is being financed by Salem Five and Lowell Five Banks through a tax exempt Mass Development Bond.

$420,000 Grant will build Allied Health Center to open in Fall

Whittier Tech News

We are thrilled to announce that we have received a $420,000 state Capital Skills grant to create a state-of-the-art Allied Health Center for dental, medical and health students. On Friday, Feb. 16, Whittier Tech officials gathered at Lynn Vocational and Technical Institute to receive their grant allocation from Gov. Charlie Baker.

The money will be used to refurbish four existing classrooms into an Allied Health Center — encompassing dental assisting, medical assisting and health assisting studies.

“We are extremely excited to be able to expand our offerings and to upgrade our learning space for all health occupations students,” Superintendent Lynch said. “Thank you to Gov. Baker for continuing to recognize the work Whittier is doing to prepare our students for college and careers upon graduation.”

The dental assisting vocational program will be new to Whittier Tech, and will launch in the fall following the completion of the new health center. Demolition is scheduled to begin in the coming weeks, and will increase the school’s health occupations learning area from 3,500 square feet to 6,000 feet.

The new dental assisting program will feature dental chairs, analog and digital X-ray equipment, sterilization centers, autoclaves, wet model trimmers, polishing and grinding equipment and a denture processing center.

“With our new center, we will be meeting the growing demands of the health care professions,” said Vocational Coordinator Bev DeSalvo. “Adding the dental assisting program will give our students the opportunity to learn an additional health occupations career path and provide a more state-of-the-art facility for all health occupations students.”

Whittier’s medical assisting program launched two years ago and trains students for clerical support jobs in the health field. The health assisting pathway is one of the school’s original offerings, which prepares students for careers in direct patient care. Graduates of the program leave high school as a Certified Nursing Assistant and can go on to college to become a nurse.

Currently, 158 students are enrolled in the health occupations pathway (medical and health assisting). Nearly 100 percent of students every year obtain co-ops during their senior year, with many continuing in those jobs following graduation.

About the Skills Capital Grant Program:
The Skills Capital Grant Program supports vocational/technical training, upgrades and expansion of career technical education, and training of high-quality career pathway programs that are aligned with regional economic and workforce development priorities for in-demand industries.

Museum of Art re-opens Feb. 2 with new improvements

DURHAM, NH –The Museum of Art closed on Oct. 17, 2016 for renovations and is now set to re- open Feb. 2, 2017. A reception to celebrate the renovations and the launching of two new exhibitions Momentum and Closer Readings: New Hampshire Writers Respond to Art isbeing held Feb. 2, 2017 from 6-8pm. The Museum of Art and its programs are open to the public free of charge.

The University of New Hampshire partnered with Charters Brothers to perform major accessibility upgrades to the Paul Creative Arts Center in Durham, NH. The Museum’s renovations included a LULA elevator, new stairwell, improvements to the gallery entrance and construction to extend the floor to make a larger landing that allows individuals in wheelchairs to access the elevator have taken place.

In addition to the LULA elevator in the museum, a second elevator is being added to the Paul Creative Art Centers Art Wing to allow access to the third floor. In addition, several bathrooms are also being renovated.

The Museum is excited to share this freshly renovated space and new exhibitions. Momentum, Works by the University’s Art and Art History Department Faculty will be on view until April 9, 2017 and Closer Readings: New Hampshire Writers Respond to Art will be on view until May 19, 2017. The Museum will be closed March 10-19 and April 10-20, 2017.

Image credit: Architect rendering renovation ground Floor, Museum of Art

Exhibitions and accompanying programs are supported by Friends of the Museum of Art and New Hampshire State Council on the Arts, Public Value Partnership Grant. The Museum of Art hours of operation during the academic year: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday 10 am-4 pm; Thursday, 10 am -8 pm; and Saturday and Sunday, 1-5 pm; closed University holiday. Follow the Museum of Art on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram #MOAUNH. The Museum will be closed March 10-19 and April 10-20, 2017. All ArtBreak programs are free and open to the public.

WRITTEN BY:
Sara Zela | Museum of Art | sara.zela@unh.edu | (603) 862-3713

Whistler Museum in Lowell to get upgrade

The Lowell Sun
By Grant Welker
September 18, 2012

LOWELL — The 189-year-old Whistler House Museum of Art is about to undergo an upgrade for a new heating and cooling system, new installation and windows and other touch-ups that will enable the museum to better show off its works while retaining its character.

With a preserved Federal and Greek-revival style, the three-story building can’t simply be given the usual modern addition. Officials from the museum, the city and contractors, including Richard Trethewey of the PBS home-repair show This Old House, met Monday morning to decide details of what units, pipes and vents would need to go where, while maintaining the historical integrity of the Worthen Street property as the top priority.

“There’s known to be ghosts in this house,” museum President Sara Bogosian said, joking that the spirits wouldn’t be happy with a job that didn’t blend seamlessly into the building.

The Whistler Museum, named after the painter James McNeill Whistler, who was born there in 1834, is paying for the renovations through membership funds, foundation contributions and a grant from the city as part of Lowell’s $5 million BetterBuildings Lowell energy-efficiency program for downtown buildings. The city’s contribution is $120,000, though the museum declined to give the total project cost.

The city chose to fund part of the Whistler project because it’s in the city’s historic district and the city wanted to showcase how energy conservation and historic preservation can be combined in a single project, said Tom Heslin, the BetterBuildings Lowell project manager. A new roof has already been put on the museum’s Parker Gallery building as part of the project, and the remainder is expected to start next week and be completed by December.

For an art museum, climate control is important, officials said. Paintings can be harmed if in too hot or too cold temperatures, and the museum can’t open windows because too much humidity and dust could be let in. New storm windows will be installed as part of the project, but they will be installed on the inside of the building to keep the same look of a building constructed in 1823. A third-story room now used for storage because it gets too hot in the summer will be available for use as a gallery.

Where to put the heating and cooling units is one of the top concerns. After debating various options, the museum and contractors settled on a location between the side of the building and the driveway, where a lattice fence could shield the units from view.

Renovations Underway at South Meeting House

Friends Of The South End
Neighborhood Association Newsletter
Autumn 2009

Along with the first cool nights and other early signs of autumn, September ushered in the long-awaited start of renovations to the South Meeting House. This first set of renovations is focusing exclusively on the exterior of the building. In mid-September, the City’s contractors began work on replacing the slate roof and also weather proofing and repairing the bell tower. By late September, the City completed stripping of the old slate roof and installed a weather proof membrane to protect the building during repairs. The City at this point anticipated that it would take approximately two weeks to install the new slate roof. In the course of repair work on the bell tower, the City discovered that the bell tower corner posts required replacement. Accordingly, work in early October was expected to involve a crane to remove the posts and stabilize the structure during repairs. The City was confident that the clock faces would not be affected by this work.

After structural repairs and the new roof are completed, the City is planning on repairing the trim and siding on the building and then painting the entire exterior. This second phase of the project was expected to take approximately three weeks, with a late October/early November completion date anticipated.

The Friends of the South End wish to thank the City Council for appropriating the funds to complete this exterior restoration work. We also wish to thank John Bohenko, Nancy Carmer and Dan Hartrey for their work in keeping the restoration on track. FOSE also thanks the neighbors who have had to change their parking routines to accommodate the work.

Portsmouth’s South Meeting House gets $200K in repairs

By Adam Leech
SeacoastOnline.com

PORTSMOUTH — Workers began the $200,000 face-lift project for the 146-year-old South Meeting House this week with the hope of getting it weather-tight before snowfall and available for a potential tenant soon thereafter.

The project is expected to take approximately eight weeks. However, workers already discovered significant rot in the bell tower that will require replacement of the corner support posts in addition to the replacement of siding and some minor work to the clock. Still, the city anticipates the project will be done before December.
“I’m hoping it doesn’t go much beyond that,” said Dan Hartrey, the city’s project manager. “We were hopeful (the bell tower) was not going to be as bad as it is. We anticipated there would be some decay, but it is what it is. We’ve got a budget we have to stick to and we’re working to make sure we get good value for it.”

The competitive bid process attracted six construction companies. Charters Brothers Construction, of Lowell, Mass., was awarded the bid, which came in below what was anticipated. Hartrey said the bid will help cover any additional costs required to fix the bell tower and he still plans to come in under budget.

The project is being funded by Urban Development Action Grant money the city already has, which means it will not impact the local tax rate.

The building at 280 Marcy St. was constructed in 1863 as a meeting house, but has also been used as a ward hall, school, church and meeting hall before it became the Children’s Museum in 1983. The museum relocated to Dover last summer, leaving 6,200 square feet of city-owned space unoccupied. The associate curator at The Sports Museum at TD Garden in Boston recently expressed interest in establishing a maritime museum in the building, but that proposal has only been discussed at this point.

City Manager John Bohenko said the project was necessary to ensure the building does not fall into a state of disrepair. In addition to the bell tower work, it will have a new roof, paint and siding will be fixed.

“It’s going to be a full overhaul to the exterior of the building. We want to make sure it’s in good shape for the winter. That was our main goal,” Bohenko said. “We’ll be working to see what type of entity will go in there, but that entity will be responsible for the fit-up of the interior.”

The bell tower was repaired in 1968 and replaced in 1979. Hartrey said the goal is to make the tower as weather-tight as possible to ensure it does not need any more repairs for at least 50 years. The more durable material should not be noticeable to passersby, he said. Work will require a crane to lift the bell tower roof off
the base.

Nancy Pollard, president of the Friends of the South End neighborhood group, said the aesthetic and structural improvements will likely make the building even more desirable to potential tenants.

“The Friends of the South End are very happy to see this go forward, and we look forward to a potential reuse at some point,” Pollard said.

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