We won! Stevens & Associated received an award in this year’s Engineering Excellence Awards Competition, held last month in Waterbury by the American Council of Engineering Companies (ACEC) of Vermont. We received the Grand Award–the highest honor–for our work on the Putney General Store
After the Putney General Store burned in 2008, Bob Stevens, founder and principal of Stevens & Associates, was on the scene, examining historic timbers and existing loading patterns. Time was of the essence—the roof was unsafe and needed to be removed. The existing structure was inadequate, and fixing it while the building was renovated meant removing the first floor and shoring up the building.
In 2009, just as the renovations were being wrapped up, the building burned again, the result of arson. The building needed to be rebuilt from the ground up. Designed by Maclay Architects, the building looked almost identical to the historic structure it replaced. Like the old building, it was cantilevered out over adjoining Sacketts Brook. A steel structure with sunken concrete counterweights supports the new building.
Floodproofing was also integrated into the design for the building. The store straddles a dam, and the flood height is above the damn. Ground water is intercepted through the soil above the dam and is discharged below it. This prevents the damaging forces that water would create during a flood.
Stevens & Associates has won similar awards for other projects in the past, including the Brattleboro Transportation Center, the Wilder Building renovation, and the renovation of its own offices in the Cutler Block in downtown Brattleboro.