A team of contractors should be wrapping up work today at the Bethlehem Central Middle School on a project to stabilize the building’s facade.
The entrance to the building has been closed since Friday, April 29, when a visual inspection revealed portions of the facade were loose. PCC Contracting was at the school Monday and Tuesday to knock down the loose portions, said Director of Facilities and Operations Gregg Nolte.
We’ve been watching this front facade and other things….we’ve been getting little pieces of mortar down near the front entrance and we wanted to get a closer look, he said.
With this work done the front entrance to the building will be reopened. A full repair of the masonry probably won’t be done until class is out this summer, but Nolte emphasized the portal is safe for public use.
`All of this was preemptive, it was precautionary,` he said.
`There was nothing catastrophic there. I don’t want to make any similarity of what happened at Town Hall,` Nolte added, referencing the March collapse of a section of the Bethlehem Town Hall’s facade onto four cars parked below.
The project, including the initial inspection by Ryan-Biggs Associates of Clifton Park, will end up costing the district in the neighborhood of $4,000, which will be covered in the operating budget. The cost of the replacement work is not yet known, but it will be a bigger project.“
