New Haven Independent

June, the boarded-up watering hole on Water Street at Brewery, will be demolished along with the adjacent vacant warehouse adjacent as work begins on the first phase of the new home of the Metropolitan Business Academy. Metropolitan, the Board of Education (BOE)’s entrepreneurial arts-themed high school, currently occupies temporary quarters on Blake Street.

At its Monday night meeting the BOE’s Administration and Finance Committee approved a contract for demolition and asbestos and other environmental abatement for the site on which will sit the 75,000 square-foot new high school. Environmental clean-up is an initial — and big — hunk of the $34 million dollar project, among the last group in the citywide school construction program scheduled to finish up in 2012.

There was considerable initial squabbling about the appropriateness of the site a year ago during the meet-the-community phase of the project. Objections were raised about the location: So close to the 34 Connector. A lack of facilities. The site will provide no athletic field. Parking. ((t turns out most of the students do not drive to school.) And health issues — the confluence of roadways, it was suggested, makes the site a kind of asthma heaven, or hell.

However, reported project manager Tom Smith and citywide school construction coordinator Sue Weisselberg (pictured), local residents at least are now pleased enough, and the project moves forward with demolition.

“We’re also going to be putting up a fence as soon as possible,” said Weisselberg. The area has seen some illegal dumping, including theft of fencing materials.

Committee members Monday authorized the general contractor, Fusco, to subcontract the demolition and abatement work to the AAIS Corporation of West Haven, whose bid for the work, $269,000, came in the lowest.