Building Chandler Addition Is Engineering Challenge

Dubois & King's former president, Bill Baumann, shows Chandler's Becky McMeekin the plans for the elaborate site-work behind the Hall. (Herald / Bob Eddy)Building a three-story addition on the back of the Chandler Music Hall building has turned out to be an intricate and fascinating engineering puzzle.

And Bill Baumann, the former president of the engineering firm of DuBois & King, loves nothing more than such a puzzle.

Chandler is perched near the edge of the moraine of light gravel that lies underneath a good part of Randolph village, and the bank slopes steeply behind it, down to Prince Street. When DuBois & King engineers first began to probe the soils of the steep bank, they made a nasty discovery:

About 35 feet below the surface, they encountered fine sandy soils and a lot of water—a state of “liquefaction” that couldn’t support anything.

Worse, when they continued to probe for solid ground, they discovered that bedrock was some 95 feet down. Building up from bedrock would cost $500,000 that Chandler didn’t have.

At that point, D&K’s Baumann made it his personal business to solve the puzzle.

Baumann’s solution is currently rising—quickly—behind the Chandler building. It’s worth a drive on Prince Street to see the striking changes being made.

What he prescribed was the near-complete replacement of the soils in the bank—along with a building-up of the bank itself right to the height of the basement of the hall.

Lots of New Dirt

The plan requires 6000 cubic yards—about 400 truckloads—of new gravel and sand to be brought to the site. When The Herald visited on Monday, two Pickett Excavating trucks were making continuous runs to a gravel pit on Peth Road and a sand pit in East Randolph. The next day, four trucks were scheduled.

All that new material is being carefully sculpted to rise all the way to the point, perhaps 75 feet above, where the foundation of the addition will ultimately be laid.

A secondary benefit—but an important one—is that the new fill will enable access by a road that winds up all the way to the back of the building. This will allow deliveries to be made directly to the stage areas.

After meeting with the town’s Fire Service Committee, Baumann made sure the Randolph Center tower firetruck also could have direct access to the back of the building.

(Baumann gave special credit to the next-door homeowner, Linnie Laws, who gave Chandler, without charge, permission to alter the slopes on her property.)

The new material will be held in place from below by what’s called an SRW segmented retaining wall made of the popular “Allen blocks.”

Stability will be aided by a “geo-grid” system of material that is spread across the new ground every few feet. Further, the soil itself is spread in 10-inch layers, which are then tightly compacted by machine, with the compaction electronically measured by a Montpelier-based lab whose employee is on the job full-time.

Tons of the original inadequate soils are being removed at the same time. One surprise was the discovery that much of the soil behind the Chandler building consisted of tons of wood ashes from the wood-fired boilers which heated the building for years.

All this will cost money—not the $500,000 that was first feared, but probably about $250,000, Baumann said.

“This amount of sitework is extremely unusual,” Bauman confirmed. “But it will last forever.”

SIDEBAR

Fundraising Continues

The foundation work behind Chandler will support a 6000-square-foot addition that is an important part of the $3.2-million “centennial building project” at the town-owned building.

The addition will provide badly-needed storage space for stage-related materials and equipment, plus an office area, with meeting rooms and storage.

The addition will also provide elevator service to all three stories of the historic building.

Other improvements to the Chandler complex will include code and safety items, such as a sprinkler system, new connections between the two parts of the building, and more and bigger bathrooms.

The historic interior of the Music Hall will not be altered, but backstage technical capabilities will include new rigging and wiring, and a safer system for adjusting the lights.

Concrete for the foundation will be poured in about three weeks, and steel for the frame is expected to arrive by mid-November.

Heat and air conditioning in the hall was temporarily turned off, butr the public is assured that the heat will be back on for this Saturday’s CD celebration concert by Myra Flynn and friends.

Project superintendent is Bill Casavant of Naylor and Breen, while Curt Albee of Strafford is employed by Chandler as clerk of the works.

At the June 27 ground-breaking, Chandler announced a “Raise the Curtain” challenge to complete fundraising. If $175,000 in new gifts or pledges are made by year-end, several generous friends of Chandler will donate another $175,000.

More than $2.85 million in commitments to the project have already been made, including a town allocation of $750,000 for the necessary code-compliance work.

As of mid-September $25,000 had been contributed toward the $175,000 challenge.

The public is invited to send a gift or pledge to Chandler at 71-73 Main Street in Randolph, or make a gift through Chandler’s website, www.chandler-arts.org.