Exterior lighting is completed and sidewalks are ready for pouring at Colegrove Park Elementary School.
NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — Real progress can be seen at Colegrove Park Elementary School, even if it's not going fast enough for officials.
Completion of the renovation of the former middle and high school on East Main Street is still pegged for October. And Mayor Richard Alcombright said on Monday that the city is still holding general contractor PDS Engineering & Construction Inc. to the original July 22 date. Penalties for the delay are pegged at $1,000 a day.
Still, much of the interior is nearing completion, the unsound southern gym wall has been rebuilt, the sidewalks are ready to be poured and the playground equipment has arrived.
Daniel Daisy of owner's project manager Strategic Building Solutions/Colliers International estimated plumbing, mechanical and electrical at close to 95 percent, with the nearest to completion on the top floor and farthest on the bottom.
Drywall and painting were ongoing throughout the building, with the painters moving quickly along.
"They have primed throughout the building and final coat started on the third floor," he told the School Building Committee at Monday's meeting. "They were painting the gym ceiling today ... that's a good sign. They would be the first ones done here if they could."
Built-in cabinets and lighting fixtures were also being installed apace, while the modular ceiling panels are being installed as HVAC and electrical are completed.
Daisy said the refrigeration units for the heating, ventilation and air conditioning system are in place but work is slower in connecting them, possibly because they are complicated.
The century-old school's wood floors have been refinished and polished but the installation of the resilient flooring seems to be taking more time than expected. The glass curtain wall on the floors above the new entrance are in with the entry itself about 60 to 70 percent complete.
"The gym changeover works is the major piece and that's probably 60 percent to 70 percent [complete]," Daisy said.
The old Drury Academy wall on the east side has been sheathed and stuccoed and more decorative sections of the wall have been retained on the interior as historical elements. The stairways are also finally be cleaned up and restored.
"There's quite a bit of plaster work," Daisy said, including unanticipated repairs. "They'd get in there and find out it was just peeling off the wall."
The dramatic uplights around the top of the school are now working as are most of the other lighting fixtures.
"All the lighting in the building is looking really great," he said.
Margo Jones of Jones Whitsett Architects said the LED lighing banks closest to the windows in the classrooms are also programmed to automatically dim depending on the amount of light coming in.
"The fixtures inside the classrooms are like an inch think and they give off an amazing amount of light," she said.
Jones showed some of the pictures taken of the progress so the committee could judge how far along the work was. A shot of the cleaned first-floor columns and their gilt capitals evoked a "wow" from the group.
She said some of the more contemporary-minded designers had wanted to remove the gilt.
"I will if you say so," Jones joked, but no one called for it.
The mayor said landscaping will be done throughout the Colegrove Park area.
"There are really some nice mature trees down there. ... the apple trees need to pruned and the overgrown bushes cut back," he said, adding some shrubbery may have to be removed.
The project is still tracking on budget. There are currently about $900,000 in change orders out but the mayor and Daisy said they were in line with previous changes that had been approved by the Massachusetts School Building Authority for reimbursement.
The committee will meet again on Sept. 14 and anticipates another walk-through for officials on Sept. 18
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Exterior lighting is completed and sidewalks are ready for pouring at Colegrove Park Elementary School. 
