BY JOSEPH B. NADEAU

WOONSOCKET — Cranes are swinging steel beams into place on the city’s new middle schools off Hamlet Avenue as the $80 million project remains on track for completion in November of 2009.

If all continues to go well, the two 880-student buildings now under construction will replace the large 1,600-student school occupying the old city high school and junior high school at Park Place sometime after school starts next fall, according to Joel D. Mathews.
“We are and have been on schedule on a week by week basis,” Mathews said of the recent construction progress.
Contractors for the Gilbane Building Co., construction manager, removed several old mill buildings from the former Lafayette Mill Complex site during the spring and followed that with environmental clean-up work targeting areas of heating oil contamination on property and a site containing a spill of industrial solvents.
The contractors used a chemical process to cleanse heating oil from the contaminated soils and will use that material for grading outside the building footprints. The soil contaminated with solvents was excavated from a location off Florence Drive and is being trucked to a disposal site out of state, he noted.
The recent work on the new buildings’ foundations and initial steel superstructure has made the layout of schools easily visible at the site. One of the buildings known as Middle School North is growing just below the remains of Villa Nova Street, a road once connecting Morton Avenue and Park Place with Florence Drive and Hamlet.
The city gave up the lower section of Villa Nova Street, from the bottom of its steep hill to just in front of the eastern corner of the North building, as part of the site acquisition work. A cul-du-suc will be located at site and a small entry way created into the new schools’ driveway and parking lot areas, Mathews noted.
A direct route through to Florence Drive will not be possible when the schools are completed.
The rest of the North Building is located on the opposite side of the abandoned Villa Nova where Consolidate Print had once been located.
The South Middle School Building is being constructed in the area of the site just off Hamlet leaving a large open space area between the two schools.
Completion of the new schools combined with future construction of the Blackstone River Bikeway along Florence Drive will combine to make the area a valuable educational and recreational asset to the city when the buildings are completed, according to Mathews.
Before that happens, however, the last remaining mill structure at the site will have to be demolished and the construction work continue through the winter without major complications, according to Mathews.
The former Miller Electric Building is still being used as a manufacturing site for Cool Aire Creations under the city’s acquisition agreement with its former owner and is expected to be vacated in November, Mathews said. As soon as Cool Aire moves to its new construction site, the mill building will be demolished by cranes and backhoes as were the other large mill buildings at the site. An option for imploding the building with explosives was ruled out due the structure’s proximity to heavily trafficked Hamlet Avenue, Mathews said.
The Miller Electric building was acquired to expand the grounds of the school site and does not fall under the construction plan now being completed.
With work well under way, Mathews said the city is taking advantage of the currently favorable cost climate in the slowed economy. “Right now we are within or below our $80 million budget figure,” Mathews said.
Hopefully the slow construction climate will continue to generate savings as the work continues, he added.
“Time will tell but it has been favorable,” he said. 
While the steel girders are being assembled, Mathews said a lot of work will remain before the buildings can be fully closed in and sealed to the elements. The race now is to get enough of the structures up to allow temporary sealing to the elements so winter work can be conducted, he said.
That would allow the construction schedule to remain on track for completion of the buildings next November and a move into the new schools by December, or if necessary, by the end holiday recess in January, he said. “Right now things are going well,” Mathews said while voicing a hope that forecast remain in place through the winter.