Photo / Courtesy of Consigli Construction
The Bates College chapel rehab project included extensive masonry work around the structure's ornate windows.
Updated: November 30, 2020
Building Business
Building Business: Bates chapel historic rehab uses 21st-century technology
Photo / Courtesy of Consigli Construction
Consigli crews work on the Bates College chapel rehab project, a Maine Preservation 2020 Honors Winner that involved using 3D scanning to replace the window casements.
By Maureen Milliken
Consigli Construction, partnering with Northern Design Precast, took historic preservation into the space age, using 3D scanning to replace century-old masonry tracery units around the stained glass windows in the Peter J. Gomes Chapel at Bates College. The project was part of a total rehab of the 107-year-old chapel that included substantial foundation, timber, masonry and roof repairs.
The work was impressive enough to win a Maine Preservation 2020 Honor Award and be named the first-ever People’s Choice Award winner, at the Nov. 12 online awards event.
The window form replacement involved scanning the stained glass and cast stone geometry and producing a solid digital model, which was exported to a CNC mold cutter, which produced a replica cast stone element. While that was going on, Consigli masonry restoration crews removed the deteriorated masonry units and prepared the openings. They then installed the fabricated replacement tracery units, and, finally reset the stained glass.
Three engineering studies over the past decade showed the chapel’s foundation was failing and shifting, resulting in bulging granite masonry and mortar deterioration. The slate roof was also beginning to fail, and the copper roofs at the chapel’s four towers were leaking. There also was underlying damage in the timber framing.
Others involved in chapel work were Thornton Tomasetti, Becker Structural Engineers, Maine Art Glass, Preservation Timber Framing Inc. and Vintage Glass Works.
A video of how it all worked is on the Maine Preservation website.
The Maine Preservation Honor Award wasn’t Consigli’s first — it also won it in 2014 for the company’s work replacing the Maine Statehouse’s copper dome.
Solterra opens at 58 Boyd St.
Solterra, a 55-unit affordable housing new build at 58 Boyd St. in Portland, opened the week of Nov. 15. Owned by the Portland Housing Authority, construction manager was Wright-Ryan Construction, it features ground-floor commercial space, as well as five floors of apartments of various sizes, onsite parking, a rooftop solar installation and community space. The project went on the drawing board in 2016, and got a certificate of occupancy in October.
Aside from Wright-Ryan, the team included CWS Architects, Carroll Associates Landscape Architects, Bennett Engineering, Ransom Consulting, Becker Structural Engineers, Sparhawk Group Commissioning, S.W. Cole Engineering, Owen Haskell Surveyors, Credere Associates Environmental Engineering; and Development Services of New England. Financing came from a combination of local, state and federal sources and private investment, including MaineHousing, city of Portland Affordable Housing Program, Bangor Savings Bank / Federal Home Loan Bank of Boston Affordable Housing Program, Evernorth / TD Bank and Efficiency Maine Trust.
Banks and landfills
Optimum Construction Co., of Portland, will build Skowhegan Savings Bank’s new Portland Business Center at 287 Marginal Way. The center is slated to open in April.
Sargent Corp., of Alton, has been awarded the contract to close the Graham Road Landfill in Brunswick, a $7.2 million project. Woodard & Curran Engineers, of Portland, is doing the onsite inspection and materials testing.
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