Mother Mary David, principal of the Sacred Heart School, and project coordinator Rich Dzialo give a tour Tuesday of the new Sacred Heart parish hall in the Taftville section of Norwich. |
Norwich — The sounds of a symphony could be heard loud and clear Tuesday coming from the new gymnasium and assembly hall at Sacred Heart School in Taftville.
Inside, there were no musicians. Only a chalky, concrete floor and a hole where a stage eventually will be.
But the music, from a CD titled “La Vie est Belle,” by Andre Rieu, proved a good test of the sound system of the new $1.2 million Sacred Heart parish hall at the corner of Hunters Avenue and South B Street.
The yearlong project is nearly completed, and parish leaders are ready to show it off. The parish will host an open house from 5 to 6 p.m. Saturday and from 8 a.m. to noon Sunday.
The parish raised about $800,000 from donations and fund-raisers over the past five years and took out a mortgage for the remainder of the cost.
“This is some difference from the old parking lot we had here,” said Rich Dzialo, a retired general contractor who has volunteered as project manager. “I never thought we'd get this far.”
The long-awaited project suffered snags two years ago when the building boom and high fuel prices sent construction costs skyrocketing. Bids came in $300,000 over budget. Dzialo said he worked closely with architect Fred Marzec Associates, CLA Engineers and general contractor Delta Building Corp. of Cromwell to “cut corners here and add things there.”
The project consists of a large combination gymnasium, cafeteria and assembly hall, a modern kitchen with a commercial stove — donated by St. Michael's Center in Baltic — storage and utility rooms, a foyer and a stairway that connects to the historic Sacred Heart School. The school has about 150 students in kindergarten through eighth grade.
Students will enter the new addition by the same hallway and stairs that previously led them to the old parking lot and playground, said Principal Mother Mary David.
“At the end of the school year, we brought all the classes down here to show them the progress,” she said. “It wasn't as far along as it is now.”
Last year's eighth-grade class will miss the experience of playing basketball in the school's first real gymnasium and eating lunch in something other than the old cafeteria that was formed by combining two classrooms. But students in the Class of 2006 created a colorful new banner to be hung in the parish hall. “Love Serves” it reads along the bottom.
David and Dzialo are considering where and how to display the banner for the open house this weekend.
School and church leaders alike have big plans for the new parish center. The new gym will have a durable, synthetic floor suitable for sports and impervious to food spills and heavy-duty chair legs.
Michelle Wetmore, the parish secretary, is planning to hold the annual parish social there next June and hopes to host a retreat for confirmation students this fall.
There used to be a Sacred Heart Young Men's Association and a Young Ladies Association. Wetmore hopes to bring those back as well.
All the planning still has to wait for the contractors to finish the job. Although the addition received its certificate-of-occupancy permit for the open house, workers still are waiting for the concrete to dry enough to install the new floor. The stage arrived in pieces Wednesday and must be assembled. Pull-out bleachers aren't in yet, either.
A formal dedication is planned for October, with a blessing by the Most Rev. Michael Cote, bishop of Norwich.
“(The open house) is just to show the parishioners that we weren't sleeping,” Dzialo said. “This is what we've been doing for them.”
