Pontedera, the principal: “No skepticisms, here is the outcome of the first meetings”. The builder Madonna (Cemes): “Works to start in January”
PONTEDERA. «It promises to be a state-of-the-art school with a gym, outdoor playgrounds, parking lots and lots of greenery. Under the banner of eco-sustainability ». Maria Tiziana Baratta, dean of the Curtatone and Montanara institute of Pontedera tells the future. The revolution in progress that will transform the eco-monster.
The ruin near the Coop which, obtained at auction by Cemes, a Pisan construction company, will be renovated and redeveloped. «It has been a month – Baratta enters into the merits – that we have opened a working table with the administration and the company, to which they have also asked us, as a school, to collaborate. Among our teachers we have included two architects and an engineer who teach technical disciplines. And then there are members of the primary and my collaborators ».
Two meetings took place and in these days the manager presented the salient points of the meetings to the school board. «I am very happy that the school, with its staff, has the opportunity to participate and to be able to make suggestions. Not only. These meetings – he adds – are direct testimony that the announced deadlines are being respected ». The new school comes to life on paper. It is the breaking latest news of the change of look.
Against doubts and perplexities. “I don’t want a certain skepticism spread about the end of the operation. I am calm and certain that by the beginning of the next school year we will have a new institute ». The pupils of the Saffi primary and secondary schools of Curtatone who, after the unusability of the building in via della Stazione Vecchia, are teaching respectively at Madonna dei Braccini alla Borra and in the prefabricated modules of Palazzo Blu, in September they will be able to start classes in the premises of what will no longer be a decaying skeleton but 9 thousand square meters of classrooms, laboratories and spaces dedicated to Pontederese students that will occupy three floors. With another 2 underground used for parking or other needs. “Immediately after Christmas – concludes Baratta – the open days are set for future members and, in that context, I will present at least the plan in its embryonic stage”.
The principal has no reason not to be optimistic. “All the milestones were reached on schedule,” he concludes.
It was summer when, like a bolt from the blue, news broke about the danger of the building complex that housed the 600 students of the historic center. A few weeks later the Municipality published a notice for a market survey in order to find a building to use as a school, knowing that it could count on an extraordinary contribution of 3 million euros to be paid in two years from the Tuscany Region. On 6 August, a proposal came from Cemes which purchased the eco-monster for approximately 1 million and 500 thousand euros. And today the prospects are concretized. A second opportunity for what many in Pontedera know as “the leftovers of the country”, as reported by the writing in large letters on the skeleton. «We are refining the executive design, accepting the wishes of all those involved. From the ASL to the fire brigade, from the school to the Municipality. It will be completed by November, ”he explains Matthew Madonna, the legal representative of Cemes. The path to follow is scheduled. «This will allow us – continues Madonna – to move on to the second phase: the signing of the preliminary purchase agreement with the administration. Which we expect by the end of December. So the site will open in January, to end in September ».