Pre-Demolition Under Way

Michael Lajeunesse and his subcontractors are now hard at work at the site. They are getting ready for the demolition of the front portion of the building. They have removed the cedar trees in front of the building

and are shoring up the back wall from inside the Daughly Gould room

Breaking Ground

The congregation reached a milestone on Friday when ground was ceremoniously broken for the new project. About 15 members of the congregation were joined by seven elected representatives, a handful of neighbors, and WCAX-TV attended the 10 am event. Speakers included Eve Jacobs-Carnahan (president), Mary Hooper (mayor and state representative), Ann Cummings (state senator), and Barney Bloom (vice-president). Rabbis Tobie Weisman and Shana Margolin (members of the congregation) provided spiritual and religious context to the proceedings, relating the event to the week's Torah reading. Eve and Barney pushed a shovel into the earth and the congregation sang "Mazel Tov."

Click here to view the WCAX report.

Contractor Hired

After a competitive bidding process, the Beth Jacob board has hired Lajeunesse Construction of East Barre, Vermont, to rebuild the synagogue. Today we held an introductory meeting with Mike Lajeunesse and about eight subcontractors at the building. Afterwards we met with the immediate neighbors to give them an idea of what we will be doing on the site. Some prep work will begin this week and then demolition will begin in earnest next week.

We will be having a short "ground breaking" ceremony at the building at 10 am on Friday. The mayor and many city counselors and elected officials are expected to attend. Since the ground is already broken (there is a building on the site, after all), we will ceremoniously remove the sign from the building to signal the impending change from the old to the rebuilt.

Packing Finished

The process of packing up the synagogue has been underway for several weeks now and was finished in an intensive two hours of work Monday afternoon. As board members and a couple of volunteers drifted in, each was given an assignment by President Eve Jacobs-Carnahan. Barney and Paul loaded two vehicles with old prayer books to be buried at the cemetery tomorrow. Sue Steinhurst and Bev Shevis finished cleaning out the religious school closet (others had taken a crack at it earlier in the process). Marc Mihaly wrapped plastic around book shelves. Michele came in and finished cleaning out the front hall closet. Everyone pitched in to clean the place out.

The strangest things we found? Two Volvo headlights and a tube of toothpaste, all in the front hall closet!

Sue moves TV stand into the kitchen.

Eve and Bev move the reader's table into the community room.

Community Room with boxes in the center.

Sanctuary cleared out except for trash & recycling.

(Empty ark is to be moved to the Community Room by the contractor.)

Moving Forward

A big sigh of relief was breathed at the synagogue this afternoon as the bids for our rebuilding project were being opened. We had put the project out to bid to five construction firms but in the end only two submitted bids, and both were within our budget for this phase of the project! Even with lots of calculating by building professionals beforehand, there is always a chance that a project like this will come in over budget and you'll have to go back to the drawing board before a single nail is pounded. Not so in this case. We had two very competitive bids from two very competent general contractors and both met our financial criteria. If everything goes as planned (and there is no guarantee that we won't encounter some unexpected circumstances) we should have some money left to set aside for the second phase of this project. The sooner we can rebuild the back part of the building the better for all involved, because it too has been strained by time and a poor foundation. The board will officially select a contractor for the first phase of the project on Monday night.

Moving Chairs

The first thing to do before you rebuild a building is to empty everything out of the old building. That is the process we started today. It was hot and sticky in Montpelier today, but we loaded up 52 upholstered chairs, uncounted number of grey folding chairs, 1 small bookcase, and several pieces of framed art work from the walls and headed toward Middlesex. Our caravan of two pick up trucks, two Honda vans, and an aging Subaru wagon was held up briefly by the "All Species Day" parade marching through the middle of the capital city (only in Montpelier!). Some of our vehicles waited and watched the parade, others took a circuitous route around the parade, but we all arrived at Camp Mead at about the same time. We filled one side of a duplex cabin with chairs and headed home. Back at the synagogue others were packing boxes of books and religious school supplies. There is still much work to do before we will be ready for the contractors to start their work.

Leaning Walls, Time to Rebuild

Beth Jacob was built as a residence, probably around 1890. In 1914 it was converted to a synagogue. At some point (perhaps in the 1940s) a shed in the back was converted to a community gathering space. In the 1930s a rabbi lived in a small apartment under the rafters above the sanctuary. Now the building is structurally unsound. The basement, which has been reinforced by concrete many times over the years, does not keep water out and does not hold the walls straight. The eastern wall is leaning inwards. We have not held services in the sanctuary for the past three winters after an engineer warned of possible collapse in heavy snow or heavy winds. Time to do something. Time to build a new building.