New Parking Lot

The Saga of Our New Parking Lot

Several years ago, members of the Dell'Assunta society, led by their president Felicia Otero, recognized the need to repave the parking lot at St. Brigid'/Our Ladyt of Hope School on Maple Ave. The lot was first paved decades ago and over time it had been patched -- though the patchwork didn't last. The lot was full of holes, ruts, and cracks.

So the Dell'Assunta Society offered to help St. Brigid's parish to find the means to repave the lot.

Dominic Iannucci of DLI Construction stepped forward and offered his services, pledging to donate his men and machines toward the completion of the project.

We would have begun right away, but it was discovered that the old curbs were in terrible condition and needed to be replaced before the paving began. We sent the job out for bids and finally settled on a contractor, who gave us a discount if we could do the demolition work ourselves. Councilman Tony D'Urso arranged for some equipment to be donated and Carmine Petti brough over some of his men and equipment and many members of the Spanish community gave their time and labor to remove the old curbs and prepare the property for the new curbs. Jamaica Ash donated the containers so we could dispose of the old curb materials. Click on image to see photos of the curb project.

Once the new curbs went in, it was winter, thus not possible to pave anymore that year.

The next problem was that it would be foolish to pave over the existing lot, given its condition. We were advised that the best thing would be to hire a company who does "mix-in-place" scarfying. That is, the existing parking lot had to be ground-up,
re-graded, compacted -- that would let us recycle the old lot as the base for the new lot. We wouldn't need to pay to have the old material carted away...we wouldn't have to buy new base material....and we certainly woudn't be paving over old cracks that would have eventually made their way through the new surface.

It tooks us a year to find a company to do the work -- a variety of offers were being made by companies who couldn't do the complete job and this delayed things. We were about to do the job in early December 2003 when it began to snow!

So...the job was postponed to the Spring. It rained (delays, delays) ...there were some fairs scheduled for the parking lot (delays, delays). FINALLY, there was an opportunity in July to do the job. Lenny Aloisio was the go-between to get the job coordinated, and work finally began in mid July with the installation of new catch basins. (Thanks to the Dell'Assunta Society who donated the cost of one of the three catch basins.) Dominic and his crew worked quickly and Carmine was able to get some other contractors to loan us trucks for the day so there would be no delay in delivering asphalt.

The only two set-backs were that the electrical wires to the parking lights were accidentally "uncovered" during the project and we needed an electrician to re-nstall them. We also needed an extra 200 tons of asphalt beyond the 700 tons orginally estimated for the job.Current oil prices also affected us -- asphalt cost $50 per ton. (If you'd like to help us pay for a ton,
click here.)

Many thanks to all who made this project happen. The lot is now beautiful -- and safe for all who use it -- especially our school children.

Here are some pictures of the project.