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By Kim Gifford
Hilary Clinton may believe that it takes a village
to raise a child, but as those involved in the
planning and construction of the Quechee Gorge
Visitor Center can tell you, sometimes it can take a
village to raise a building as well, especially a
building that has been almost 15 years in the
making.
Although a lengthy process, the $2.5 million,
3,200-square-foot Visitor’s Center is now finished;
its completion marked by a June 23 dedication.
Funding came from a variety of sources including
numerous grants. $1.15 million came from a Public
Lands and Highways Federal Highways grant. The Army
Corps of Engineers, owners of the new facility,
contributed $930,000, and an enhancement grant of
$350,000 aided in the sidewalk improvements.
“This has really been a great cooperative effort, to
work with people who maybe had different goals in
mind, but who came together to achieve a common
one,” says Mark Wilmes, project manager with the
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
In addition to the Army Corps of Engineers, there
were a number of principals involved in the Project
including the Vermont Department of Forest and
Parks, which leases from the Army Corps the land
where the visitor center is located, and the
Hartford Area Chamber of Commerce, which will staff
and manage the facility. Other key entities included
VTrans and the Town of Hartford as well as the
Quechee Gorge Management Committee, consisting of
interested members of the community and nearby
businesses.
“This has really been a great cooperative effort, to
work with people who maybe had different goals in
mind, but who came together to achieve a common
one.”
The project originated nearly 15 years ago out of a
concern for pedestrian safety near the gorge and a
need for public restrooms. 500,000 visitors come
through the area annually with at least 90,000
leaving their vehicles to walk the nearby trails.
“The Corps’ main concern was to protect the
resources and the public safety. Basically there
were no sanitary facilities for the public. Since it
is such a sensitive area, there was an impact to the
resources without having a facility designed to
handle the number of people. This is an important
feature that we’re now providing,” says Wilmes.
The visitor center also offers visitors a
destination upon leaving their vehicles.
“There was really nothing that drew you to one
place. The visitor center is going to draw people to
this area and is going to be a place where they will
be able to come in and get information about all of
Vermont, the Corps of Engineers, the flora, fauna
and natural resources in the area and learn about
the gorge and its history,” says Wilmes.
Lori Hirshfield, director of Planning and
Development for the Town of Hartford, estimates that
the new visitor center may attract 200,000 people
through its doors.
The Building
The exterior of the facility is unassuming and
deceiving in its size and appearance. The red,
two-story wood frame structure with pitched roof was
“specifically designed to look like the sheds and
warehouses across the street that were remnants of
the railroad line, says George Turner of Banwell
Architects, architect of Lebanon, NH.
Built into the hillside, the facility literally
draws visitors from the busy roadside, taking them
into a surprisingly open and spacious building
comprised of natural wood and glass, down a grand
staircase to a back patio and out into nature.
The actual location for the footprint of the
building was “very restricted,” says Michael Rosa,
project manager with general contractor
Trumbull-Nelson Construction Company. Since the
space was compact the challenge was to maintain the
greenery and work with the slope to transition
visitors from the street to the walking trails
below. “The glass opens the building up and pulls
you in,” says Hirshfield. “The beautiful, natural
woodwork complements the outdoors.”
Rosa says it was also “a challenge” to blend the
patio and the retaining walls and stairs into the
slope and achieve “a natural looking wall.” The high
ceilings although creating an airy space, also
presented a challenge with the light fixtures, which
consequently had to be placed so high up that their
ability to cast sufficient light was called into
question and thus, needed to be resolved. The
handrail along the staircase also posed a problem in
accessing the glass display cases that lined the
walls. DMS Fabrication from Barre, VT discovered a
solution, redesigning a new, hinged handrail on site
that could be disconnected and lowered in place to
provide easy access.
The interior of the visitor center will feature
2-foot by 4-foot panels, offering information on the
history of the region, the gorge, and the Army Corps
of Engineers. In addition to the Chamber’s offices,
the building houses a multipurpose room, a
mechanical room, a handicap accessible lift, an yes,
public bathrooms.
At the outset of the project the location of the
building was also a challenge.
“We had to work with the lay of the land and there
were potentially a few different options – nearer
the gorge and farther away from the gorge, down more
near the campground,” says Turner. Although Turner
was originally in favor of a site that would provide
a view of the gorge, this wasn’t possible. “We ended
up with was quite a compromise I guess, but given
that compromise, we were interested in coming up
with a building that worked with the site’s unique
features.
The Sitework
Sitework accounts for nearly “two-thirds of the
value of the project,” estimates Rosa. In addition
to the construction of the actual building, the
project called for site and utility work including
excavation, backfilling, grading, seeding, and
planting; the construction of a parking lot and
driveway complete with curbs, pavement marking and
signage and a special crosswalk extending from the
visitor center northerly across Route 4. The
crosswalk will soon be modified, as part of a test
pilot project for the State, to incorporate pavement
lighting that will illuminate the crosswalk when
activation pads are stepped on. “The State is taking
another intersection of a similar nature and not
putting pavement lighting on it and comparing the
two to determine if there is any effect on
pedestrian safety,” says Hirshfield.
Additional sitework involved the construction of a
concrete sidewalk, landings and patio area, wooden
stairs and a railing, a retaining wall, storm
drains, water and wastewater piping and pumping
stations and a leachfield. To achieve all this, some
campsites in the Quechee State Park had to be
relocated and trail system improvements made. The
project also called for new water main installation
and new curb and sidewalk construction along the
north side of Route 4 as well as parking area
improvements west of the Quechee Gorge Bridge.
“A lot of effort went into the project that people
don’t see from the initial building,” says Wilmes.
Bringing water to the visitor center, for example,
was a major issue. “There was no water on the east
side of the bridge. To bring the water we had to
have drainage and catch basins to accommodate the
drainage,” says Wilmes. The water had to be brought
under the Quechee Gorge Bridge, a national
historical site. This resulted in the need for
historically correct hangers for the water line and
unexpected expenses that were generously met by
private businesses to see this phase of the project
to fruition.
“There was also the septic to accommodate,” says
Wilmes. He calls the resulting system “really well
designed.” It pumps sewage from the toilets to a
pumping station and leachfield in the campground.
These challenges were also compounded by the fact
that this infrastructure work was being done at the
same time that “the new stormwater controls came in
from the Agency of Natural Resources,” says Gayle
Ottmann, executive director of the Hartford Area
Chamber of Commerce. “Last summer if anyone traveled
through here they must have wondered how businesses
were surviving. It was a really rough summer for
them. With all the equipment and dirt, we had to
divert traffic, but they were very patient,” she
says. |
