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Community Center To Get New Pavilion
The sound of mallets and saws will resound in early April on the grounds of a community center in Glasgow, as the Virginia Military Institute FTX timber framers join with the Concerned Citizens of Glasgow to literally raise the roof – and in fact a whole pavilion structure -- on the playground of the James E. Thompson Community Center.
The new pavilion will replace a structure that for many decades served families and organizations for reunions, picnics, birthday and retirement parties, and occasional outdoor church services, offering a multigenerational family-friendly place for parents and children to gather near the playground.
The project began after it was determined that the old pavilion had deteriorated to the point of becoming a hazard and was removed. Last year, CCoG board member Preston Sledd reached out to the timber framers about this project. At that time, Sledd was a participant in both of last year’s timber framing projects for the city of Buena Vista.
The local timber framers are headed by Grigg and Cindy Mullen and are a well-known entity in the Rockbridge area. Their projects in recent years have included last year’s building of the large pavilion and band shell for Buena Vista’s Town Square, as well as previous builds for Project Horizon in Lexington and structures on the grounds of various parks and schools in the area. The pavilion in Glasgow will be the group’s 51st project overall, and is a design produced by two cadets from VMI’s wood engineering class in the Civil Engineering program.
“The Concerned Citizens were very fortunate to be selected for the upcoming Spring build,” said CCoG President Keshia Hartwill. “This is a unique opportunity for our community to obtain a pavilion of a quality that’s beyond price.”
Many in the community are already aware of the timber frame projects which have been the ongoing work of the Mullen family and teams of hundreds of volunteer timber-frame artisans. For more than two decades, these timber framers have come together twice a year in Rockbridge County from all over the country, assisted by a cadre of cadets from VMI. In order to understand what was to come, Concerned Citizens members were encouraged to go see the new pavilion and band shell in Buena Vista’s town square.
The current project is scheduled to begin on April 4 at the Mullens’ farm and workshops, which are located outside Rockbridge Baths, with the final “pavilion raising” taking place at the Thompson Center in Glasgow on Tuesday, April 8. CCoG members Sledd and Dave VanOsten will be working on the project with the timber framers.
As he has done for every project since 2000, Tom Sheets of Blue Ridge Lumber in Fishersville is donating the timber, the project’s essential component, which would otherwise be its greatest outlay. Costs for the CCoG include expenses for site preparation at the center (grading, gravel, steel reinforcement and concrete) rental equipment, instructors’ fees, building supplies, and feeding the over 120 volunteers breakfast, lunch and dinner for five days.
Fundraising by the Concerned Citizens for the project has been ongoing for the better part of a year, and has ranged from pie sales, cakewalks, Halloween and Christmas dances to pledge drives within the community. Additionally, they have been the beneficiaries of generous contributions from local churches, the NAACP, the Gadsden Trust, and the Community Foundation of Rockbridge, Bath andAlleghany.
“We’re grateful for the generosity of the Mullen family and the timber framers who come from all over to do this work,” said Hartwill. “We also appreciate the businesses and organizations who’ve stepped up to provide meals for us. We couldn’t have done this without all of the volunteers, the donors, and Mr. Sheets’ incredible generosity.”
Upon completion of the timber-frame structure, the Concerned Citizens will need to install a metal roof, and the group is accepting donations for this effort.
Hartwill added that the Concerned Citizens expect to extend thanks and payback when the pavilion is finished by offering a place where everyone in the community and all who helped make it possible can come enjoy the work of the VMI FTX timber framers. “Our mission is to create, find and support programs that directly improve the quality of life for the citizens of Glasgow and the surrounding areas,” she said. - The VMI FTX timber framers began as a civil engineering project more than 25 years ago, when Grigg Mullen was a professor in the Civil Engineering department at VMI.
As part of their class work, cadets were required to come up with a concept for a project and design it. The structure would then be built by cadet timber framers and volunteers under Mullen’s direction.
Over the years, the initial teaching project grew into a program executed during VMI’s fall and spring field training exercises (FTX), and alumni from earlier classes returned as volunteers. Other carpenters interested in timber framing joined, and the Mullens now find they can and must choose carefully to assemble the best teams for the fall and spring projects.
Grigg is now retired, but the program continues to draw cadets who choose timber framing for their field training exercises; they become part of the timber framing team, which relies on traditional carpentry techniques and tools for the greater part of the process.
Donald “Donnie” Martin, VMI ’13, one of Mullen’s former students and a cadet timber framer, is now teaching the wood engineering course at VMI and organizing the cadet efforts The Concerned Citizens was begun in the 1980s for the purpose of saving, preserving and operating the former African-American elementary school as a neighborhood asset and gathering place. The school, which closed in the 1960s following racial desegregation, has since been renamed the James E. Thompson Community Center, in honor of the principal who served there. Since its inception, the Thompson Center has come to serve as a location for community dinners, historical presentations, church gatherings, and social events including reunions, dances, and concerts.
For more information about the Thompson Center, the current project, or the CCoG’s continuing community projects, email [email protected].
THIS SCHEMATIC of the new pavilion planned for the Thompson Community Center in Glasgow was provided by Grigg Mullen, who has been the man behind the local timber frame projects for the past quarter century.
