Schumack Engineered Construction

Rebuild of old seawall at Olmsted Outlook in Guilford expected to be competed this fall

schumackadmin — Sat, 20 Jul 2024 15:41:41 +0000

By Susan Braden, Staff Writer
July 19, 2024

GUILFORD — Olmsted Outlook is a place where passersby can watch ducks languidly glide in with the tide or spot the flash of a leggy heron spear a fish with its long, narrow beak.

Now, its most obvious feature is a hulking excavator sitting at the river’s edge, part of a $388,000 project to rebuild the crumbling seawall undertaken by the Guilford Land Conservation Trust.

The original fieldstone wall has been pounded by rising tides and eroded by major flood events, pushing stones into the West River and onto its banks. Add to that 150 years of buffeting high tides twice a day.

With rising sea levels in recent decades, “It doesn’t require a storm anymore,” Sarah Williams of the GLCT said about more recent destruction. “The moon and a tide can cause it now — it no longer requires a hurricane like it used to.”

Humans have caused damage to the park as well, with snowplows shoving heavy snow and ice into the gate. Motor vehicle accidents have also damaged the wooden fence, sometimes collapsing it.

“It’s the snow or the drivers,” Williams said. “Sometimes people do have accidents there. It’s pretty crazy.”

The town set aside $270,000 in American Rescue Plan funds for the seawall rebuild, with the remainder to be made up in donations and additional money from the town. The initial estimate for the completed project is $388,000, according to town officials.

“We will work with the GLCT to cover the eventual cost,” said First Selectman Matt Hoey.

Construction began in February, and the land trust hopes it will be finished by fall.

That’s when the view is most spectacular, according to neighbor and GLCT board member Tim Sperry, whose family had owned the property across the street since the mid-1700s.

“I have to say that the view across the West River marshes, especially in the fall, is like no other,” he said. People come down to the outlook around dusk to stand by the wall “and look out across the river at sunset, and it’s magical.”

Sperry has long ties to the park and remembers it being an overgrown field when he was a boy in the mid-1960s. His family owned the red barn, once the Old Stone Cider Mill built in 1820, that sits across the street, and his home is around the corner.

Then neighboring parents got together, and “so basically, we, the kids in the neighborhood, were conscripted once or twice a year for several years to go down there and clean it up,” he recalled with a chuckle.

At one point, the neighbors thought the best way to control the weeds was to burn it.

“So we had the fire department on standby, and basically, somebody lit a match and torched the whole place,” leaving “a nice clean landscape there,” he said.

Clearly, more drastic measures are needed now to save the park, and these present some unique challenges working at the site, the contractor on the project noted.

With a “grapple” attachment on the excavator, Schumack Construction is removing the existing stonework in the wall piece by piece. The contractor will build a heavy concrete retaining wall and reconstruct the old stone wall as a “veneer” to hide the new work from view, according to Scott Hines, project manager.

The new wall will be stronger than the original when it was new and will prevent erosion. “Now we have a concrete retaining wall that’s really doing all the work of holding the soil together,” Hines explained.

The new seawall will be the same height, and the original granite stones from the old wall, “all of it,” will be saved — even pieces that were knocked into the river, Williams said. Those stones will be used for any part of the wall that is visible and above ground, she added.

Timing is everything for this project. Hines noted that the crew can only dig into the soil at low tide and must work from a raft floating in the river to do the higher stonework.

Shore Design of Guilford is doing the engineering designs and helping with the permitting process with the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection and the Army Corps of Engineers.

Working on the site since late winter, Hines said, “It was a little cold when we started in late February, early March, but it’s been nice now. It’s a very nice spot for sure.”

Olmsted Outlook is named after Frederick Law Olmsted, who is celebrated for designing Central Park in New York and is considered the father of American landscape architecture.

Called the “most loved spot” in town,” the half-acre park was created in the mid-1800s and was named in the 20th century in honor of Olmsted, who had a farm in Sachem’s Head in 1846.

Purchased by his father, Olmsted’s 70-acre farm “extended to the rocky ledge of Long Island Sound,” according to local historian Tracy Tomaselli.

Olmsted enjoyed living in Connecticut and the Northeast.

“One of his joys as a child was traveling with his family ‘in search of scenery.’ The family traveled often through the Connecticut River Valley and to New York State and the Maine coast,” Tomaselli wrote.

Olmsted’s legacy in the state endures now. He created parks in New Britain, Walnut Hill Park; Hartford, Keney Park and the grounds of the Institute of Living; and Bridgeport’s Seaside and Beardsley parks. He also did many private commissions, according to ctexplored.org.

In Guilford, the narrow strip of riverfront with lush marshlands as a backdrop is a popular spot for picnickers and wedding photos.

The gardens are tended by members of the land trust, which has owned the parcel since 1982 when it was donated by Howard Weaver, the dean of the Yale School of Art and Architecture, and his wife, Debbie, who lived across the street, according to Sperry.

Williams noted that Olmsted Outlook is a unique property for the land trust to steward. Mostly, the GLCT maintains more wild areas in town, such as Bluff Head, Westwoods and Nut Plains Woods, among other open space. She estimates the GLCT owns as much as 10 percent of the land in town.

“It’s not what we normally have. We have natural land, and we don’t really do parks, but this is just so important to the community that we decided that it was worth it,” Williams said.

Incoming GLCT President Janet Ainsworth also has great affection for the park. “Olmsted Outlook has always been one of my favorite stops when riding my bike downtown,” she said.

“And you can see natural areas from it. You can do birding, and we’ve done river explorations at low tide from there with children,” Williams noted.

“We are incredibly grateful that the Board of Selectmen voted to direct ARPA funds to help us save this much-loved Guilford place,” she said.

The GLCT is fundraising to support Olmsted Outlook into its next 100 years, Williams said. Donations can be mailed to P.O. Box 200 or completed through www.guilfordlandtrust.org.

Everything But the Building

schumackadmin — Fri, 20 Jan 2017 15:58:35 +0000

By Jimmy Zanor CLINTON
Jim Lally is always looking for a challenge. From building an advanced septic system for the Madison Beach Hotel to developing fish ladders on the Quinnipiac River, Schumack Engineered Construction is certainly more than your average “pick-up truck with two shovels in the back.” Schumack tackles municipal (roads, dams, and bridge work, etc.), residential (drainage, septic, etc.), and commercial (drainage, water main work, etc.) projects with years of experience and expertise. It is, indeed, Schumack’s versatility that has enabled it to create a niche in the construction industry. Jim Lally, owner and president, took over the business in 1979 from his friend, Bill Schumack. Jim liked working on “Engineered Projects” as they are more of a challenge. He pursued these projects and then renamed the company Schumack Engineered Construction.

Schumack is located in a residential neighborhood on Glenwood Road in Clinton. Each project would require Schumack to strip a layer of soil and remove it off-site for disposal, and at the end of the project, they would bring in screened topsoil. Jim saw the need for a place for Schumack to take this exported material and screen it to make topsoil. Indian River Enterprises was born in 1995 and named due to the Indian River located behind the property. Indian River has grown and has many different quality landscaping/aggregate products for sale to contractors and homeowners. In 2011, Shoreline Landscapes was established, and now Jim has a team for the demolition, excavation, construction materials, and the finishing touch of any project—everything but the building!

Schumack’s versatility allows the company to take on a wide range of projects from fish ladders to commercial site work projects. Fish ladders are exactly that—a fish ladder. When dams were built, certain fish like the herring could no longer swim up the river to breed in the spring due to this obstacle. “We’ve built several very successful fish ladders throughout the state. It’s a different kind of work, and when you hear of its success, it’s extremely rewarding. Some of the fish ladders are equipped with a window and counter so the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection can tell the species and number of fish swimming upstream.”

Another type of project Schumack tackles is advanced treatment sewage systems. These systems are for large-volume users to treat waste, turning it back to acceptable water for discharge. Schumack has done three of these systems in the past eight years. The company has also completed several road reconstruction projects on the shoreline, such as McTigh Road in Haddam, Green Hill Road in Madison, Parker Hill Road in Haddam, and Pickett Lane in Durham, to name a few. These road projects are tricky as the team has to work around traffic to keep it passable for homeowners, buses, and emergency traffic while ripping out the old asphalt, sidewalk, and drainage and putting in new.

The commercial site work projects have been completed in various locations, including the Middletown Senior Center, a salt shed for Clinton Public Works, the Madison Senior Center, and the Madison Ambulance Garage, along with a couple of box stores and several pharmacies. Schumack also works with residential homeowners on septic systems, driveways, shed pads, foundation construction—the list goes on. “We like to do things that are challenging,” Lally said.

Lally’s team of employees all work together and have contributed to the success of the company. Lally has been blessed with a dynamic, expert group of hardworking, longstanding employees, which include Scott Hines, Susan Hull Weglein, Kevin Foreman, Art Lebert, and mechanic Harry Esposito, to mention a few who have been with Schumack for 20 years or more. Scott Hines, Art Lebert, and Harry Esposito have all been with the company since the 1980s. They each have an important position that has contributed to the success of the company. Susan Hull Weglein began working at Schumack as a part-time bookkeeper in 1997 and is now celebrating her 20th year with the company. Susan is an integral part of Schumack’s operations, which includes Indian River and Shoreline Landscapes.

Susan says, “Jim is a great mentor and teacher. Some employees have come aboard without experience, and he brings them along, giving them a chance. That’s why there is longevity here.” Kevin Foreman was with the company in the 1980s, moved out of state with his family, and has returned, working as Schumack’s general manager, bringing the office and the field work together to see the project from start to finish.

In closing, these three companies, linked together by one person and run with a team of professional and efficient people for over 37 years, are still going strong.

Fishway at Wallingford dam may be named for early QRWA backer

schumackadmin — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 18:19:20 +0000

Russell Blair, Record Journal
February 27, 2012

Harry Olav Haakonsen dedicated his life to fish restoration along Connecticut’s many rivers and streams, so former students and colleagues say it’s only fitting that the Wallace Dam Fishway be named in honor of the late environmentalist.

“He died before it happened, but this was always his goal,” said Mary Mushinsky, executive director of the Quinnipiac River Watershed Association. Haakonsen died in 1995 at the age of 53 after a long battle with cancer. Mushinsky was a student of Haakonsen’s when he was a professor of chemistry and director of the Center for the Environment at Southern Connecticut State University, where he taught for 26 years. “He was a very positive guy. He had a very upbeat personality,” she said. “Whenever there was an obstacle, he always had a way around it.”

The fishway, or fish ladder, consists of several steps that fish can swim and leap up to get past a barrier, in this case the Wallace Dam, on the Quinnipiac River off Quinnipiac Street. For years, volunteers lifted the struggling fish over the dam with nets and buckets so they could go upstream and spawn.

Haakonsen was heavily involved with environmental issues on a local level. He worked with the QRWA during its early years and was a member of the Conservation Commission and the Wallingford Land Trust. “He was very committed to Wallingford,” said Steve Gephard, supervising fisheries biologist at the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection.

Gephard worked with Haakonsen in a professional capacity and said he and Haakonsen had collaborated on studies of Atlantic salmon. “I appreciated his assistance to the department,” Gephard said. Gephard also praised Haakonsen’s ability as a teacher. “There are a number of people who are working for DEEP who are students of his,” he said. “There’s an unusual success rate among his students in the environmental field.” Mushinsky called Haakonsen a “town environmental leader.”

“Naming the fishway comes from his long interest in restoring fish,” she said. “Unfortunately his illness did not allow him to see his dream come true, but now it’s coming true.”

Construction of the fishway, which began last October at a cost of about $400,000, is being paid for through grant money. The project should be completed by April.

The Wallace Dam has obstructed diadromous fish passage on the Quinnipiac River for well over 100 years. A fishway has recently been constructed there allowing river herring, shad and other types of fish to pass freely over the dam and reach their native spawning grounds. This video shows the beginnings of the final stage – removing the coffer dam and allowing water to pass through the fishway.

Wallace Dam Fishway partners include Save the Sound, Quinnipiac River Watershed Association, Connecticut Department of Energy & Environmental Protection, National Fish & Wildlife Foundation, NOAA Restoration Center, Restore America’s Estuaries, the Town of Wallingford, Milone & MacBroom, and Schumack Engineered Construction.

Lally Named Killingworth Lions Club Citizen of the Year

schumackadmin — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 18:51:31 +0000

Fiona Phelan, Killingworth Krier
February 18, 2012
The Killingworth Lions Club has selected James H. Lally as the recipient of its Citizen of the Year award. The award is presented to a citizen of Killingworth who has demonstrated leadership in Community Service.

Lally was honored during the annual Lions Club Senior Dinner at St. Lawrence Church last month. In making the announcement last month, the Lions Club noted that “James H. Lally has generously volunteered his time, energy, professional expertise, and corporate resources to improving the town of Killingworth.

“I don’t know how you managed to stay under the radar all these years with all the things you have done for this community,” Lions Club President Hilary Kumnick stated on recognizing Lally. ”

Lally has “demonstrated saintly patience in serving on numerous town committees, including nine years on the Recreation Commission and eight years—and counting—on the Town Office Building Committee,” First Selectwoman Cathy Iino noted in the town’s proclamation.

State Senator Ed Meyer read citation from the General Assembly declaring February 18 Jim Lally Day.

Lally has also donated construction services to almost all of Killingworth’s civic facilities, including the Ambulance Association building, Killingworth Elementary School, Rocco Reale Memorial Field; and the Town Office Building. He provided crucial material for the Killingworth Town Picnic, from flatbed trailers to bovine personnel for Cow Pie Bingo.

Lally has also supported such activities as youth sports leagues, the HK Youth and Family Services Pumpkin Run, and the Lions Club Concert Series.

Lally and his wife Pauline have lived in Killingworth since 1972. In 1985, he purchased the 200-year-old Skyline Farm on Bunker Hill Road where he raises Polled Hereford cattle for seed stock.

Over the years he has donated the services of his construction company and equipment toward the building of the Killingworth Ambulance Association building, the scoreboard at Rocco Reale Field, the addition at Killingworth Elementary School, and the moving of both the Black Rock and Pine Orchard schoolhouses.

Lions Club President Hilary Kumnick, First Selectwoman Catherine Iino, 35th District State REp. James Crawford, COY Jim Lally, State Senator, 12th Dist. Edward Meyer.

Work Continues on Senior Center, Ambulance Building, Bradley Corners Bridge

schumackadmin — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 18:14:08 +0000

By Jen Matteis
Shore Publishing

11/11/2010 – How do you save money working on two different construction sites? One answer is to work on both of them at once. That’s the philosophy behind the simultaneous construction of Madison’s new senior center and ambulance facility, undertaken as an effort to save money when the project’s bids failed to match its estimates.

“When the bids came back, early June, they were all over the board. Some were below what we thought, some were significantly above, which was a surprise,” remarked former first selectman Tom Scarpati, the chairman of the senior center building committee. “Since the package of bids came in well above our $5.515 million budget, we had to regroup and make certain modifications.

“We knew we had to eliminate a third of the months of construction in order to be able to put that money back into the design,” he said.

The original plan was to complete the senior center before beginning construction on the ambulance facility. However, despite the fact that construction on the senior center began much later than anticipated, both projects should meet their initial completion date of August 2011. The Depot closed early last month to accommodate work on the ambulance facility at the corner of Route 79 and Old Route 79.

“That will permit us to finish both buildings at the same time and within the original schedule,” said Scarpati.

Bride Brook Restoration Project

schumackadmin — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 18:14:56 +0000

Long Island Sound Study

Niantic, CT, April 19, 2010 — Today, Congressman Joe Courtney, D-2nd District, joined representatives of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Restoration Center (NOAA), U.S. Department of Agriculture – Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, FishAmerica Foundation, Restore America’s Estuaries (RAE), the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), and Connecticut Fund for the Environment (CFE) at the dedication of the Bride Brook restoration project at Rocky Neck State Park.

Don Strait, executive director of Connecticut Fund for the Environment, said, “Our partners and the state’s Congressional delegation are truly remarkable. Not only do they recognize that the benefits of a strong and healthy Long Island Sound are vitally important to both the environment and the regional economy, they bring a unique passion and level of education to this community that is inspirational. Finishing this one restoration project is an essential part of reviving a much bigger system, but it also demonstrates what can happen when citizens and government unite for a common purpose, a lesson well timed for the 40th anniversary of Earth Day.”

“The completion of the Bride Brook restoration project is a great example of the power that partnerships can have. Agencies and organizations, working together, have accomplished a major victory for restoring this critical habitat,” said Jeff Benoit, president and CEO of Restore America’s Estuaries, a national alliance of coastal conservation organizations.

In June 2009, NOAA awarded Save the Sound, a program of CFE, $1.5 million through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to support two marsh restoration projects—the Bride Brook culvert replacement at Rocky Neck and the West River tide gate replacement in New Haven. The NOAA funding, in conjunction with funding already in place from NRCS, U.S. Fish and Wildlife, FishAmerica Foundation, CT DEP and RAE, made the Rocky Neck project a reality. Click to read full story >