New Agriscience Center Breaks Ground

Suffield town officials, school administrators and other community members attended the groundbreaking ceremony for the new Suffield High School Agriscience Annex, located behind the high school, on Monday afternoon.

Agriscience center director Rick Jensen said this facility will benefit the students at the high school. He liked seeing this project begin its final stage of development.

“It takes a lot of people to make a project like this successful,” he said.

First Selectmen Tom Frenaye said it was nice to see the facility finally being built after so many years of planning, with a lot of stops and starts during that time.

Frenaye said the town received the grant for the facility at least 10 years ago. He said one hold up was the purchasing of land a few years ago.

Harrison Griffin, recently retired after serving as director of the Agriscience Center for 37 years, said the new annex was originally planned for the old Suffield High School building.

“We have always needed to have an animal facility,” Griffin said. “This will be a big asset.”

Ed Basile, director of fiscal administration for Suffield public schools, said that Haynes Construction, located in Seymour, has until August 2012 to finish the project. He said that the company hopes to be finished before that date.

Principal Donna Hayward said that she was “incredibly excited to see the project come to fruition.”

“It’s a tremendous resource for our students,” Hayward said.

Vice Principal Ed Garvey said this project has been 12 years in the making.

“I’m surprised the state let us keep the money,” Garvey said. “The grant to have this done was written 12 years ago. It had a five-year window.”

Garvey said the project kept on being prolonged, but the state never took back the grant money.

“I’m happy for the kids in the program,” Garvey said. “It’s needed. It will fill a void in their program.”