As Weaver High School’s proposed makeover inches closer, plans currently don’t include renovations to the North End school’s fieldhouse and its auditorium is in limbo, the city’s chief architect says.
Architect Tony Matta, design overseer for all city capital-improvement projects, says the Hartford Schools Building Committee is moving ahead to seat a design-selection panel who eventually will hire Weaver’s project architect. If all goes as planned, Weaver’s makeover would be completed sometime during the 2018-19 school year.
However, the architect won’t be chosen, Matta said, until after the building committee obtains final results of a study due last Friday calculating Weaver’s likely student enrollment in coming years.
The aim, Matta said, is to avoid remaking the 40-year-old schoolhouse on Granby Street to a pupil-capacity it will never see. The current 244,000-square-foot building was built to accommodate as many as 2,400 students, way more than a preliminary estimate of its future head count at 877, he said.
The city is hoping to avoid, Matta said, the dilemma that has befallen the recently renovated Media Magnet Academy on Tower Avenue, home to the school system’s journalism magnet school.
The state is withholding payment of the last $8 million of its $30 million funding commitment for that edifice, pending completion of a journalism-program enrollment study, Matta said. It may turn out, he said, that the city has been overreimbursed, if the enrollment projection is lower than expected, or due the remaining $8 million, if enrollment is on point.
Weaver’s fieldhouse redo was tagged at about $25 million; the auditorium interior/exterior upgrades at around $5 million, so the final project cost is unset, Matta said.
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E. Hartford office space for lease — furnishings included
A portion of office space in East Hartford’s Founders Plaza section has come on the market.
Up to 9,500 square feet is available for lease at 225 Pitkin St., directly off Exit 3 on Route 2. It contains furniture that can be part of the lease, as well as space outside the building for the tenant’s own signage.
According to commercial listing broker RM Bradley Co., the office is currently built out with two conference rooms, a large team training room and spacious kitchen and break-area.
Asking rent is $18 gross per square foot.
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Startup’s N. Britain space
Le Scribes LLC has leased 3,360 square feet of warehouse-distribution space at 32 Ellis St. in New Britain for its startup electronic-commerce operation.
Co-owner Shukhart Kamalov says he moved in April into space in a factory building off Route 9 that he uses for storing and distributing his retail lineup that includes toys, health and beauty aids, vitamins and baby products.
Ellis Street Holdings LLC is landlord.
Colliers International was the broker.
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Energy Beam renews
Energy Beam Sciences Inc. has renewed its industrial lease for 6,120 square feet in the Airport Business Center in East Granby.
The designer-maker of laboratory microwave, histology and light microscopy hardware has occupied the facility at 29 Kripes Road since 2005.Â
Airport Business Center 3 is landlord.
Sentry Commercial was sole broker.
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