Insider Notebook: Maine Preservation People's Choice honor award goes to ...
Courtesy / Consigli Construction
The renovation of the Bates College Chapel was the 2020 Maine Preservation People's Choice Honor Award winner after more than 900 historic preservation fans weighed in.
Maine Preservation’s Honor Awards ceremony kicked off online last Thursday with one award left to name – the People’s Choice.
Envelope, please.
And, the winner is … the Bates College Chapel.
More than 930 online votes were cast to choose the People’s Choice among the 12 honored projects at this year's virtual event. The Honor Awards were announced Nov. 9.
The chapel, recently named the Peter J. Gomes Chapel, was built in 1913 by Boston architectural firm Coolidge and Carson. It had deteriorated a lot over the years, and the renovation ended up being a meeting of old-school upgrades and some 21st-century technology.
To replace the masonry around the stained glass windows, Consigli Construction and Northern Design Precast used 3D laser scanning. They scanned the stained glass and cast stone geometry, then converted the 3D point cloud data to a solid digital model, which was exported to a CNC mold cutter. A replica cast stone element was produced, according to Maine Preservation’s description.
While that was going on, Consigli masonry restoration crews removed the deteriorated masonry units, prepared the masonry openings, installed the fabricated replacement tracery units and then reset the stained glass.
There were a lot of issues with the chapel besides the shift in the cast stone window tracery, which left the stained glass vulnerable. Three engineering studies spanning a decade showed evidence of failing, shifting and bulging granite masonry and mortar deterioration. The slate roof was beginning to fail, and the copper roofs at the chapel’s four towers were leaking.
Because of intrusion and faulty roof system, there also was underlying damage in the timber framing. Restoration was necessary to repair serious structural and aesthetic damage in order to preserve the space.
The two-phase project, led by Consigli and engineering consulting firm Thornton Tomasetti, first addressed the roofing, flashing and masonry. The windows were taken care of in the second phase. Project participants were the college, Consigli, Thornton Tomasetti, Becker Structural Engineers, Maine Art Glass, Northern Design PreCast, Preservation Timber Framing Inc. and Vintage Glass Works.
Maine Preservation has videos of the work, as well as videos describing all the award-winning projects, on its website.
Moving on to totally new construction. Rock Row in Westbrook has signed a tenant for the building that already houses an 80,000-square-foot Market Basket supermarket. The Paper Store has leased 9,000 square feet next to the grocery store, which opened in August.
The Massachusetts-based gift store chain announced last year it would open a store at Rock Row, but earlier this year it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection as losses related to the COVID-19 pandemic mounted. With the eight-store company now reorganized, the long-standing plan to open a location at Rock Row regained top priority, Rock Row developers Waterstone said in a news release.
A few weeks ago, Waterstone announced that Firehouse Subs, Big Fin Poke, Chase and Chick-fil-A will also occupy space in the Market Basket area near the corner of Main Street and Larrabee Road.
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