Ground-breaking next week for new Margaretville Pavilion
Village
officials, community volunteers and a design/build
team of professors and students from Parsons, the New
School of Design, are expected to break ground next
week for construction of a new pavilion on the
Village ball field behind the A & P store in
Margaretville. The project, which is scheduled for
completion before Labor Day, will be a wooden and
steel structure designed to withstand a 100-year
flood event according to award-winning architect,
David Lewis who has spearheaded the project for
Parsons. A separate and much smaller pavilion to be
used primarily for cooking is also slated for
completion as part of the Parsons program. The new
pavilion, funded by hundreds of donations still being
collected and construction loans guaranteed by Ken
Pasternak and the M-ARK Project, will not cost a
single dollar of taxpayer funding according to
Margaretville Mayor, Bill Stanton. Though the
existing pavilion will be demolished prior to the
annual Firemen’s Field Days at the end of the month,
the Parsons group has worked with the Margaretville
Fire Department to curtail the construction site so
the carnival can go on as scheduled without being
moved to Arkville, as was the case last year when the
Village field was flooded.
Pasternak,
whose foundation first gave a $30,000 challenge grant
then added another $20,000 when the original
challenge was met, said he was excited about the
pavilion project and happy to support it. “If you
stop and think about it,” said Pasternak, there has
been nothing really big or really new built in our
area in quite some time. This is an opportunity to
make a substantial improvement in an important
community resource. I think if Margaretville can get
this done, it will lead to a lot of other community
endeavors.” Pasternak, who grew up in Fleischmanns
and graduated from Margaretville Central School, has
supported a number of community projects and
institutions in the last decade and in addition to
committing funding for the pavilion in Margaretville,
has granted significant sums being used to stimulate
improvements in Fleischmanns this summer. “I am
really excited to be part of revitalizing the area
and improving the quality of life for everyone here,”
Pasternak added. “These kinds of public/private
projects demonstrate a vibrancy that will attract
other supporters and investors as additional projects
are planned. Our Main Streets need some of that sort
of vibrancy right now.”
Community Pavilion had Long Life
Before construction begins, the existing pavilion on the field will be demolished by Hubbell Companies, Inc. ending an era for a structure built in the late 1960s with donations raised by the Chamber of Commerce and an ad hoc group of local residents called the “Bearded Brothers and the Sisters of the Swish.” The concept was developed after several years of extremely successful summer fairs that attracted thousands of people to the Village. According to archives of the News, the most successful of these annual festivals was a bi-centennial celebration for the Town of Middletown in 1963, when an August parade attracted more than 15,000 people an became “the largest crowd ever to view a parade in Delaware County.”
As part of the summer-long bi-centennial festivities, men grew facial hair and donned top hats, tails and sleeve garters and women wore long gowns, bonnets and old-fashioned purses. Labeled the Bearded Brothers and the Sisters of the Swish, participants stayed organized after the centennial to raise money for a pavilion so they would not have to rent tents for future festivals. Part of a larger group of women labeled the Belles of the Bi Centennial, the Sisters of the Swish continued efforts into the next summer when their treasurer, Josie Roucek, along with Pat Yaekel and Mary Marsico gave $200 to Ceil Aronson, then president of the Greater Margaretville Chamber of Commerce to launch the pavilion fund.
When enough funding had been raised, 28 telephone poles donated by the Margaretville Telephone Company were brought to the site and erected by phone company employees. Local builder Gordon Rosa was then hired to construct the roof, and the rest, as they say, is history. In later years, the Margaretville Fire Department was permitted to build a masonry service area under one corner of the structure which has been used as a food service center for annual events like the carnival, the hospital flea market and more recently, the Chamber of Commerce Cauliflower Festival.
In recent years, concerns about the viability and safety of the structure have grown steadily with some Village officials predicting that a good hefty snowstorm could actually level the structure before plans to re-build it were implemented. Replacement of the pavilion has been discussed since at least 2001 when a village revitalization plan was undertaken in a joint effort by the Greater Margaretville Chamber of Commerce and the M-ARK Project. But while a major re-landscaping project to change the entrance to the park was completed, funding to replace the pavilion remained elusive. .
In 2005, the M-ARK Project wrote a grant request to the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation to replace the structure with a Morton building at a cost of nearly $100,000 (a cost that has since risen to over $150,000). The application languished in the state bureaucracy for more than a year before officials were notified that it had been declined.
Citizens Initiative for Community Spaces
Last summer, noticing that many village improvement projects were lacking funds, New Kingston residents and Galli Curci theater owners David France and Jonathan Starch explored the possibility of starting an ad hoc organization to see projects through to completion. France researched all studies and plans developed for the community going back to 1991, including plans from the Chamber of Commerce, the M-ARK Project and a host of other organizations.
Starting last August with representatives from the Greater Margaretville Chamber of Commerce the
M-ARK Project, the Margaretville Central School, the Margaretville Memorial Hospital, the Margaretville Fire Department and individual volunteers with no particular affiliations, France formed a coalition whose primary goal was to raise money to get things done. Calling themselves the Citizens Initiative for Community Spaces (CICS, which rhymes with kicks) the group prepared a list of things it would like to see accomplished in and around Margaretville, including among others, trying to re-develop the Mirabito property on Bridge St. into an attractive Village entryway. After listening to Mayor Stanton talk about the plight of the pavilion and the urgent need to replace it, the group voted to make fundraising for that project its first effort.
Starting with a fundraising party in October and a second similar party in December, the group raised the first $10,000 toward what would become a $200,000 effort. Kicking into high gear in February, CICS members raised over $100,000 of the funds needed between March and May of this year. With $50,000 in grant funding from the Pasternak Family Foundation, $10,000 from the Margaretville Telephone Company, $10,000 from the Daniel and Tanya Pulver Family and $5,000 from the A. Lindsay and Olive B. O’Connor Foundation, the group was able to raise another $40,000 in matching funds from other donors, including $1,000 each from the Greater Margaretville Chamber of Commerce and the Margaretville Rotary Club.
A Catskill Country Auction is scheduled by the group for June 30 at the Three Brooks Farm home of Michael Moriarity and Donna Hollon in New Kingston. With a number of antique pieced and quilts donated, and the professional services of Chuck McIntosh as auctioneer, the group expects to raise another $15,000 in its quest to complete the effort. An antique surveyor’s map of Delaware County, once owned by Jay Gould, a one of a kind piece coveted by local historians, is expected to be the highlight of the auction, which will also feature a flower basket quilt and other high quality antiques and collectibles.
In addition to the auction, other fundraising activities are scheduled throughout the summer and a CICS Cans campaign has begun with supportive merchants seeking donations from local patrons in counter cans provided by CICS. Based on other written pledges of funding the M-ARK Project was able to secure and guarantee loan funding from Ken Pasternak and from M-ARK coffers, to guarantee completion of the project this summer while the Parsons students and their professors are available to be here to construct the pavilion they designed. All of the $200,000 in funding needed to complete the pavilion this summer has been placed in a restricted fund account for the Village of Margaretville so taxpayers can be guaranteed a completed project without having to worry that taxpayer funding might be needed. All funding raised after the project is initiated will be used to pay off the loans secured in May.
Design Process by Parsons the New School for Design
Late last summer, as CICS was forming to raise funds to build a pavilion, Tony Whitfield, a Department Chair at Parsons, the New School of Design, took an interest in the Village and offered to see if his colleagues and students might be able to help. October 2, a group of Parsons instructors visited the village and toured the pavilion site, as well as other sites in the area. A contingent of Margaretville residents went to New York City to continue the discussions with Parsons and assess the capacity of the school and its programs to complete a variety of projects in the community.
Students in a junior level design class agreed to work on a prototype of an “artist kiosk” that might eventually be used at a number of different sites in the village. Four graduating seniors chose to do thesis projects on assorted village concerns and the Masters of Architecture students agreed to take on the design and construction of a new pavilion. Through negotiations with CICS, M-ARK Project officials and the Village Board, a tentative budget of $90,000 was established and a community-driven design process began.
The tentative budget chosen was based on what community members felt they could raise, and what they thought would be the cost of doing a “do-it-yourself” Morton building if Parsons was unable to do the work.
Students developed three different models and brought them to the Village for consideration. Scores of Village residents and organizations weighed in with comments and suggestions on design features they liked and didn’t like. In addition to a large public meeting at the school, there were six other smaller meetings with constituents including fire department and Chamber of Commerce members, Village officials and Code Enforcement Officer, Patrick Davis. What could and could not be built in the flood plain was a major part of the design process from its earliest days, with all designs suggested planned to sit as much as possible, “above” the high water mark in a 100 year flood event.
When the three designs were narrowed to one, students set about drawing construction documents and pricing options, and reviewing plans with a structural engineer who would eventually sign off on them. At that point, the cost of the pavilion as designed rose significantly because structural engineers could not guarantee the permits and long term viability of the design constructed entirely with wood as originally planned.
Cadillac vs Yugo
Seeing a dramatically increased price on the horizon, Parsons officials spoke with community leaders to determine whether they should scale back the design to one that could be covered by the original budget or whether fundraisers wanted to try to raise the additional funds needed to construct the pavilion as designed.
As funders pondered the cost differential, Village board members struggled with a design that had gone from mostly wood to one supported by steel beams surrounded by wood.
With fundraising exceeding initial expectations, CICS members decided they would rather go for the grand scheme than scale back the effort to one that could be accomplished in the initial budget. They agreed that if the Village Board would approve the design with the steel components, that they would continue raising funds until all the money needed was raised. M-ARK Board Executive Director Joan Lawrence-Bauer, a member of the CICS coalition, said “When people ask why we need such a fancy pavilion, I tell them we don’t need it, any more than a person needs a Cadillac when a Yugo would get them to the same destination. But sometimes, as human beings, we want something bigger and better than what we had before and if we can afford it, we should be able to go ahead and buy it.”
Throughout the entire planning process, those involved recognized that uses of the existing pavilion have been somewhat limited to just those uses where shelter from sun and rain was the only requirement. “The thinking in the 1960s when this was built was just to have a structure to provide cover from the elements,” said Lawrence-Bauer. “The current thinking is that we can do more that than. That in addition to having a protective covering, we can also have an attractive building that folks will want to use more often, and for different purposes.” Lawrence-Bauer noted she does not believe a wedding has ever been held at the pavilion in Margaretville and that with a fancier structure, uses of that nature might now become a reality.
While some community residents have suggested that money being donated for the pavilion might be better used on other projects, Lawrence-Bauer noted that it was the pavilion project that inspired donors to give the money in the first place. “We showed them a design, a vision if you will, and they literally bought into that vision, we can’t now divert the money they gave to some other project.” She also noted that many of the folks giving for the pavilion are giving to a community project for the first time ever. “Now that these ‘new givers’ are engaged in the community, I’m sure they’ll give to other causes in the future.” Lawrence-Bauer also noted that once the pavilion is completed, the CICS group hopes to work with other community organizations on additional projects. “It isn’t a case of ‘the pavilion or nothing at all’ with these donors,” said Lawrence-Bauer, “it’s a case of ‘first we do the pavilion, then we see what’s next on the community priority list’ that we can do. When CICS took on the pavilion, it was because they were told it was the top priority,” she added. “We all look forward to tackling the next priority identified once this is done.”
For more information or to view the pavilion plans, stop in the Gottfried Municipal Building, or check out the CICS website at www.catskillCICS.org.
Community Pavilion had Long Life
Before construction begins, the existing pavilion on the field will be demolished by Hubbell Companies, Inc. ending an era for a structure built in the late 1960s with donations raised by the Chamber of Commerce and an ad hoc group of local residents called the “Bearded Brothers and the Sisters of the Swish.” The concept was developed after several years of extremely successful summer fairs that attracted thousands of people to the Village. According to archives of the News, the most successful of these annual festivals was a bi-centennial celebration for the Town of Middletown in 1963, when an August parade attracted more than 15,000 people an became “the largest crowd ever to view a parade in Delaware County.”
As part of the summer-long bi-centennial festivities, men grew facial hair and donned top hats, tails and sleeve garters and women wore long gowns, bonnets and old-fashioned purses. Labeled the Bearded Brothers and the Sisters of the Swish, participants stayed organized after the centennial to raise money for a pavilion so they would not have to rent tents for future festivals. Part of a larger group of women labeled the Belles of the Bi Centennial, the Sisters of the Swish continued efforts into the next summer when their treasurer, Josie Roucek, along with Pat Yaekel and Mary Marsico gave $200 to Ceil Aronson, then president of the Greater Margaretville Chamber of Commerce to launch the pavilion fund.
When enough funding had been raised, 28 telephone poles donated by the Margaretville Telephone Company were brought to the site and erected by phone company employees. Local builder Gordon Rosa was then hired to construct the roof, and the rest, as they say, is history. In later years, the Margaretville Fire Department was permitted to build a masonry service area under one corner of the structure which has been used as a food service center for annual events like the carnival, the hospital flea market and more recently, the Chamber of Commerce Cauliflower Festival.
In recent years, concerns about the viability and safety of the structure have grown steadily with some Village officials predicting that a good hefty snowstorm could actually level the structure before plans to re-build it were implemented. Replacement of the pavilion has been discussed since at least 2001 when a village revitalization plan was undertaken in a joint effort by the Greater Margaretville Chamber of Commerce and the M-ARK Project. But while a major re-landscaping project to change the entrance to the park was completed, funding to replace the pavilion remained elusive. .
In 2005, the M-ARK Project wrote a grant request to the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation to replace the structure with a Morton building at a cost of nearly $100,000 (a cost that has since risen to over $150,000). The application languished in the state bureaucracy for more than a year before officials were notified that it had been declined.
Citizens Initiative for Community Spaces
Last summer, noticing that many village improvement projects were lacking funds, New Kingston residents and Galli Curci theater owners David France and Jonathan Starch explored the possibility of starting an ad hoc organization to see projects through to completion. France researched all studies and plans developed for the community going back to 1991, including plans from the Chamber of Commerce, the M-ARK Project and a host of other organizations.
Starting last August with representatives from the Greater Margaretville Chamber of Commerce the
M-ARK Project, the Margaretville Central School, the Margaretville Memorial Hospital, the Margaretville Fire Department and individual volunteers with no particular affiliations, France formed a coalition whose primary goal was to raise money to get things done. Calling themselves the Citizens Initiative for Community Spaces (CICS, which rhymes with kicks) the group prepared a list of things it would like to see accomplished in and around Margaretville, including among others, trying to re-develop the Mirabito property on Bridge St. into an attractive Village entryway. After listening to Mayor Stanton talk about the plight of the pavilion and the urgent need to replace it, the group voted to make fundraising for that project its first effort.
Starting with a fundraising party in October and a second similar party in December, the group raised the first $10,000 toward what would become a $200,000 effort. Kicking into high gear in February, CICS members raised over $100,000 of the funds needed between March and May of this year. With $50,000 in grant funding from the Pasternak Family Foundation, $10,000 from the Margaretville Telephone Company, $10,000 from the Daniel and Tanya Pulver Family and $5,000 from the A. Lindsay and Olive B. O’Connor Foundation, the group was able to raise another $40,000 in matching funds from other donors, including $1,000 each from the Greater Margaretville Chamber of Commerce and the Margaretville Rotary Club.
A Catskill Country Auction is scheduled by the group for June 30 at the Three Brooks Farm home of Michael Moriarity and Donna Hollon in New Kingston. With a number of antique pieced and quilts donated, and the professional services of Chuck McIntosh as auctioneer, the group expects to raise another $15,000 in its quest to complete the effort. An antique surveyor’s map of Delaware County, once owned by Jay Gould, a one of a kind piece coveted by local historians, is expected to be the highlight of the auction, which will also feature a flower basket quilt and other high quality antiques and collectibles.
In addition to the auction, other fundraising activities are scheduled throughout the summer and a CICS Cans campaign has begun with supportive merchants seeking donations from local patrons in counter cans provided by CICS. Based on other written pledges of funding the M-ARK Project was able to secure and guarantee loan funding from Ken Pasternak and from M-ARK coffers, to guarantee completion of the project this summer while the Parsons students and their professors are available to be here to construct the pavilion they designed. All of the $200,000 in funding needed to complete the pavilion this summer has been placed in a restricted fund account for the Village of Margaretville so taxpayers can be guaranteed a completed project without having to worry that taxpayer funding might be needed. All funding raised after the project is initiated will be used to pay off the loans secured in May.
Design Process by Parsons the New School for Design
Late last summer, as CICS was forming to raise funds to build a pavilion, Tony Whitfield, a Department Chair at Parsons, the New School of Design, took an interest in the Village and offered to see if his colleagues and students might be able to help. October 2, a group of Parsons instructors visited the village and toured the pavilion site, as well as other sites in the area. A contingent of Margaretville residents went to New York City to continue the discussions with Parsons and assess the capacity of the school and its programs to complete a variety of projects in the community.
Students in a junior level design class agreed to work on a prototype of an “artist kiosk” that might eventually be used at a number of different sites in the village. Four graduating seniors chose to do thesis projects on assorted village concerns and the Masters of Architecture students agreed to take on the design and construction of a new pavilion. Through negotiations with CICS, M-ARK Project officials and the Village Board, a tentative budget of $90,000 was established and a community-driven design process began.
The tentative budget chosen was based on what community members felt they could raise, and what they thought would be the cost of doing a “do-it-yourself” Morton building if Parsons was unable to do the work.
Students developed three different models and brought them to the Village for consideration. Scores of Village residents and organizations weighed in with comments and suggestions on design features they liked and didn’t like. In addition to a large public meeting at the school, there were six other smaller meetings with constituents including fire department and Chamber of Commerce members, Village officials and Code Enforcement Officer, Patrick Davis. What could and could not be built in the flood plain was a major part of the design process from its earliest days, with all designs suggested planned to sit as much as possible, “above” the high water mark in a 100 year flood event.
When the three designs were narrowed to one, students set about drawing construction documents and pricing options, and reviewing plans with a structural engineer who would eventually sign off on them. At that point, the cost of the pavilion as designed rose significantly because structural engineers could not guarantee the permits and long term viability of the design constructed entirely with wood as originally planned.
Cadillac vs Yugo
Seeing a dramatically increased price on the horizon, Parsons officials spoke with community leaders to determine whether they should scale back the design to one that could be covered by the original budget or whether fundraisers wanted to try to raise the additional funds needed to construct the pavilion as designed.
As funders pondered the cost differential, Village board members struggled with a design that had gone from mostly wood to one supported by steel beams surrounded by wood.
With fundraising exceeding initial expectations, CICS members decided they would rather go for the grand scheme than scale back the effort to one that could be accomplished in the initial budget. They agreed that if the Village Board would approve the design with the steel components, that they would continue raising funds until all the money needed was raised. M-ARK Board Executive Director Joan Lawrence-Bauer, a member of the CICS coalition, said “When people ask why we need such a fancy pavilion, I tell them we don’t need it, any more than a person needs a Cadillac when a Yugo would get them to the same destination. But sometimes, as human beings, we want something bigger and better than what we had before and if we can afford it, we should be able to go ahead and buy it.”
Throughout the entire planning process, those involved recognized that uses of the existing pavilion have been somewhat limited to just those uses where shelter from sun and rain was the only requirement. “The thinking in the 1960s when this was built was just to have a structure to provide cover from the elements,” said Lawrence-Bauer. “The current thinking is that we can do more that than. That in addition to having a protective covering, we can also have an attractive building that folks will want to use more often, and for different purposes.” Lawrence-Bauer noted she does not believe a wedding has ever been held at the pavilion in Margaretville and that with a fancier structure, uses of that nature might now become a reality.
While some community residents have suggested that money being donated for the pavilion might be better used on other projects, Lawrence-Bauer noted that it was the pavilion project that inspired donors to give the money in the first place. “We showed them a design, a vision if you will, and they literally bought into that vision, we can’t now divert the money they gave to some other project.” She also noted that many of the folks giving for the pavilion are giving to a community project for the first time ever. “Now that these ‘new givers’ are engaged in the community, I’m sure they’ll give to other causes in the future.” Lawrence-Bauer also noted that once the pavilion is completed, the CICS group hopes to work with other community organizations on additional projects. “It isn’t a case of ‘the pavilion or nothing at all’ with these donors,” said Lawrence-Bauer, “it’s a case of ‘first we do the pavilion, then we see what’s next on the community priority list’ that we can do. When CICS took on the pavilion, it was because they were told it was the top priority,” she added. “We all look forward to tackling the next priority identified once this is done.”
For more information or to view the pavilion plans, stop in the Gottfried Municipal Building, or check out the CICS website at www.catskillCICS.org.