Belfast Public Works and Solar Array

Belfast, Maine, October 16, 2019- A ribbon cutting ceremony took place yesterday for the new Belfast Public Works Facility and Solar Array field.

​As the sun shined on a perfect fall day, approximately 50 public works employees and community members gathered outside the buildings to properly recognize the new Public Works facility, a project that the department has been anticipating, for many years.  The existing Public Works facility was built about 50 years ago with dirt floors and very few renovations have been done since.  When Belfast City Councilor Mary Mortier took a walk through of the building 6 years ago, she commented on disgusting environment that the 13 full-time and 3 seasonal workers had to work in day after day.  She made it her mission to provide the public works department the respect that they deserved, by giving them better working conditions.
 
The city of Belfast partnered with Gartley & Dorsky Engineering & Surveying Inc., Jon Hansen Architects and Ledgewood Construction as the Construction Manager on the project.  The new public works facility is 27,700 sq. feet, almost twice the size of the old one. With 17 bay doors, two heated and one unheated truck bays, there is plenty of room to house the 40 pieces of equipment owned by the department, which includes plow trucks, loaders, graders, sidewalk machines and more, said department head Bob Richards. There’s a large indoor vehicle wash bay that has hot water, which is a big improvement and should keep vehicles in better repair. Included in the project was a new 9,000 sq. foot sand and salt shed.
 
During the ceremony, Mary thanked Will Gartley from Gartley & Dorsky Engineering & Surveying Inc., Pete Pelletier, Scott Clark and Peter Wormell from Ledgewood, commenting that the project would not have gone on as well as it did, if it wasn’t for the great team they had behind it.  She especially recognized Superintendent Peter Wormell, who was always thinking of the next steps and things that they might want or need, as the building was being built.  It was a real team effort and the project was run very smooth, without any large challenges, and finished on time and under budget.
 
The City also did a ground breaking for the five-acre solar array that was built next to the facility.  This is the third solar array in the city and allows Belfast to offset at least 90 percent of its municipal electric costs. “A lot of planning went into making this building as close to net zero as possible,” Mortier said. “The solar field is part of it.” 

City Manager Joseph Slocum leads the ceremony.

(From left to right) Will Gartley (Gartley & Dorsky Engineering & Surveying Inc.), Peter Wormell (Ledgewood Construction), Scott Clark (Ledgewood Construction), Pete Pelletier (Ledgewood Construction), Mary Mortier (City Council) and Bob Richards (Public Works Director).

​Bob Richards, Public Works Director, cuts the ribbon for the new facility.

Ledgewood Construction is a Construction Management/General Contracting firm located in South Portland, Maine.  Ledgewood has been building Maine communities one commercial project at a time, since 1978. Maine is where we live and where we work, and we have kept our commitment to building and enhancing our communities for over four decades. We build smart, and seize every opportunity to give our clients more than we guaranteed.

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Media Contact:
Lisa Beeler, Ledgewood Construction
lbeeler@ledgewoodconstruction.com
Phone: 207-767-1866 x105