CUMBERLAND – Restoration work on the Amaral Building, started last September by E.W. Burman Inc., is on schedule for a one-year completion this fall.
A tour Monday showed that piles of drywall have arrived and are now going up, as walls and ceilings go in at what will become a center for the wider community to have needs met.
Sarah King, town community outreach coordinator who will help manage the building, said she expects it to be open as a resource center and hub for health services within about a month of its completion.
The rear addition, which will actually function as the front door that patrons enter, is now up, and a space for a future elevator is in place.
Jeff Stone, of E.W. Burman, said work is happening quickly after initial efforts to shore up a building that, predictably, had suffered some rot over decades of being vacant. The building overall has “some good bones,” he told The Breeze.
HVAC units are in, and restrooms will also be installed.
Stone said they’re working to preserve windows and woodwork, saying the existing floors will be sanded down, restored, and look great when complete.
After the ceilings and walls are completed in the office and meeting spaces upstairs over the coming weeks, Stone and his crew will move on to the upstairs finishes and then start the meticulous work of restoring the actual front of the building, the historic facade facing the Blackstone River and the future revamped Valley Falls Heritage Park.
That work, said Stone, will involve building the windows essentially from scratch to make sure they’re in keeping with the historic look of the former grocery store and post office.
Planning Director Glenn Modica said one task still before them is to pick a color for that street side of the building, which officials are hoping will make a statement along Mill Street next to Town Hall.
This entire $3.15 million project, said King, is still funded through grants. The town is holding a 15 percent contingency in case of overages, but officials are hoping to use as little of that as possible so they can then move the money over to Heritage Park, said King.
Town officials are planning a wellness hub and community resource center tied in with the riverfront park across the street.
The first floor of the center will be a generally open concept, with a new giving closet, full of shelf-stable foods and other items, located in the former meat closet/freezer. The old woodwork on that room will be redone, said Stone.
The Amaral Building, built circa 1890, is a two-story, brick building with corbelled cornice adjacent to Cumberland Town Hall. Instead of brick, the new façade facing away from the street will now be siding. That’s because historic preservationists wanted to delineate which parts of the building are new and added on, said King.
Given first crack at choosing a room for their paramedicine and preventative care operations, EMS personnel chose the large second-floor room overlooking the waterfall and the park, said King, who laughed as she said how she kicked herself a bit for giving them the first option.
The building is thought to have originally served as a company store for the Valley Falls Company, which operated a major textile factory across the street along the Blackstone River in what is now Valley Falls Heritage Park, say town officials. During the early 20th century, a portion of the building housed a post office and library. By 1921, Portuguese immigrants Ezequiel Pires and Seraphim Cardanha had converted the first floor to a grocery store and added a three-bedroom apartment above. The firm of Pires & Cardanha split in 1937, and the building was sold to Joaquim and Maria Amaral, who continued to operate the store and live in the apartment above from the early 1940s to 1988.
By 1990 the building had been abandoned, and in 2007 the Neves family (related to the Amarals) sold the building to the town of Cumberland. The town replaced the roof and abated asbestos. In 2015, the town removed the exterior staircase to the east, and the only access to the second floor is now to reach that side via a ladder. The planned new stairs will also likely be outside, according to the town.
Stone said the roof has also been replaced, a key to buttoning up the exterior and making sure to protect it from the elements, and support beams have been installed. He said there won’t be any water issues when all is said and done, with the rotted sill along the foundation all replaced.
In addition to vaccine administration, wellness screenings, blood pressure tests, cholesterol screenings, and other health offerings, the building will host affordable housing assistance, food insecurity supports, physical activity programming, domestic violence prevention, veteran services, job training, and access to high-speed internet/laptops, among others.
New restrooms will be installed near the front lobby (within the addition) and on the second floor, and the second-floor restroom will feature a shower in case there’s ever an emergency shelter situation, said King.
She said about 60 percent of the exterior brick is expected to need to be repointed as part of this project, and the goal is to preserve as much as possible of the exterior. Modica and King said they were surprised to see how quickly the new addition went up, and have been happy with the progress to date.