City Scheduled to Take Ownership of New Goodyear School Next Week

Sometimes communities give people honorary keys to their city.

A week from today, city officials will receive a working set of keys to a new public building: the .

As of July 15, the contract date, “We’ll own the building,” Patrick Saitta, president of Municipal Building Consultants, Inc., which represents the city on the project, told the building committee Thursday afternoon.

The building will be “substantially completed” by then, Saitta told the committee. “Substantial completion” means “a point in time when a building is ready for its intended occupancy,” Saitta explained to Woburn Patch. Saitta anticipates that a temporary occupancy permit would be issued about the same time, before moveable furniture, fixtures and equipment are brought in starting the week of July 18. An occupancy permit would be issued before the end of August, he projected.

Public tours of the school will probably be scheduled for the end of August, when everything is in place. 

Everybody is excited about the new school, Ward 5 Alderman Darlene Mercer-Bruen told the committee. When, she asked, can constituents see it for themselves?

State School Building Authority personnel walked around the site and gave it “a clean bill of health,” Saitta said.

If you drive by the school, on the corner of Montvale Avenue and Central Street, you may notice that the construction fencing is down on the sides of the site along those roadways. Fencing will remain along the back side of the property.

Trees, the jewelry of a construction project, have been planted along the Montvale Avenue side.

Landscaping is “well underway,” Saitta told the committee.

Workers will continue to bustle around the site, according to Saitta. Paving material will be poured and smoothed. The play field surface will be laid Saturday. Floors will be cleaned and waxed. A phone line must be activated to the elevator before the elevator can be inspected. Storage trailers and temporary office trailers will be removed from the site.

Workers have already addressed a snafu with the air conditioning system. When the chillers were first turned on, water overflowed from the roof and dripped onto the gym floor.  The problem is being addressed, Saitta said, with both air conditioning and dehumidifiers.

City and school officials will be trained on new school equipment, according to discussion, starting the week of July 18. 

Across town, at the , portable classrooms put up to house students from the old Goodyear while the new Goodyear was built, will be removed at the end of August, the end of the lease period, Saitta said.

Inside the Clapp School, boxes of teachers’ classroom materials sit in their former classrooms, waiting to be moved into their new home, primarily at the new Goodyear. Teachers’ supplies and equipment will be moved in August, according to the Municipal Building Consultants’ report. Outside the Clapp-Goodyear School, classroom desks and chairs stood in rows Wednesday, like soldiers, waiting, school principal Christopher Heath said, to be transferred to another city elementary school.

A ribbon-cutting will be held at the new Goodyear School after the school is up and running, according to committee discussion. No date was set.