New Haven Independent

It’s really been eight years, not 80, but it might have felt like eight decades to the parties involved in the long, drawn-out battle between some Everit Street residents who tried to block the school from their back yard, and the city, which finally triumphed at the state Supreme Court in August and won the right to put the grade 3-8 school on that site. (Click here for a background story.)

Sue Weisselberg (pictured on left with school principal Carol Kennedy) chaired Tuesday night’s informational meeting, and introduced State Rep. Cameron Staples. The meeting took place at the old St. Stanislaus school on State Street, where the upper grades of Hooker are temporarily housed.

Staples (pictured on the right with Mattison in the middle) explained how he hopes and expects the project will get additional funding from the state. It was originally budgeted for $25 million, but now, after all the delays and the escalating cost of labor and materials, it is estimated to cost $35.5 million. Because of the State Bond Commission’s timeline, there won’t be a decision on it until May 2008.

Bill Moore (pictured) of Roth & Moore Architects described how the new school will be built around an existing church building, with its sanctuary being transformed into a 350-seat auditorium and the lower level into a cafeteria. New construction will include a full-size gym and three stories of classrooms. He took pains to describe the fencing that will go around the school, the driveway off Whitney (with a traffic light at the entrance) and all the landscaping that will be done.

He added that the school was originally planned without any outdoor climbing equipment, since the youngest grades are in the old, refurbished and recently reopened Hooker School nearby on Canner Street. The plans have been changed to include that amenity. Moore explained that it will be available for neighborhood use after school and on weekends.

Tom Dembinski, construction manager for the construction firm R2D (this reporter kept waiting for an extra “2” at the end, but it never came) explained where vehicles will park and how many tradespeople will be working on the project (peaking at about 125). He said workers will be encouraged to carpool, and possibly to park in the lots of local churches if that can be arranged. But, he added, “Some will be parking in the neighborhood.”

He said an 8-foot fence will go up first, and tracking mats will keep the dust and dirt mostly confined to the construction site. He said prep work will commence in December through February, with full-on construction starting in March, and hopefully winding up by spring 2009.

During the Q&A session, most of the questions focused on parking, additional traffic and exactly where the parents who drive their kids to school (a small minority, Principal Carol Kennedy assured the crowd) will go. When parent Mark Branch, at his first Hooker construction meeting, said he’d feel more comfortable having his son walk into school not from the Whitney Avenue side, but from the Everit Street side, laughter rippled through the room. Weisselberg said that issue had been discussed at great length during the fight over whether to put the school there in the first place. After the meeting, Cookie Polan, a parent leader in trying to get the new school up and running (and whose twin daughters just entered college this fall), explained to Branch that not having the entrance on that side was a compromise to satisfy the school’s Everit Street opponents.

Another concern was raised by Jonathan Knisely (pictured), an Everit Street resident who asked what school officials knew about the existence of chordane, a toxic chemical found on the property. Architect Moore explained that it was found on just a portion of the site, and will be remediated by removing the top foot of soil. After the meeting, Knisely said he was glad to hear that, but had been concerned that, in the search for a site, “certain sites that were considered were immediately taken off the list of sites that could be considered because of a perception that there may be irremediable pollution, and that process didn’t ever adequately evaluate this site until after the city had purchased it with the intention of putting a school there.”

The second part of Ed Mattison’s greeting was, “The building, as you will see today, is absolutely gorgeous, and what we need to do is just get it done.” There seemed to be general agreement on that. Weisselberg added, “With the litigation done, I think people are looking at it differently. Their questions are, ‘How do we make sure it works in our neighborhood from a construction standpoint for the next year and a half, and in terms of how it operates. I think their questions were a little different. Their approach was different, and ours was too, because we really do want to make it work for them as best we can.”