For this month’s Barton Anniversaries Project Highlight, we asked our Senior Project Manager, Robert A. Sells, PE, CSI what his favorite at Barton project was. This month Bob celebrated his 37th year with Barton Associates below he talks about his favorite project over his career at Barton.
“In 37+ years at Barton Associates and hundreds of projects of every type and challenge imaginable, I have never had the feeling like I had today…
Today I walked through the front doors of an empty, yet completed lobby of the York County History Center Steam Plant that consolidates historical exhibits from multiple sites, artifact storage, event space, and operating offices. I thought about the generations of lives that will be impacted by the historical and educational displays and growing history that is York County.
I remembered first walking through the 100+ year old buildings 7 years, 3 months, and 5 days before for an initial walk-thru when CrossFit Gym, The Escape Room (“you can’t tell anyone what you see in here!”), The Framers store and warehouse, the York County Drug Task Force, and Verizon were the occupants. The buildings are so much like our own Barton Building with its history of providing energy to the city of York (ours being coal gas and theirs being steam). I could not imagine then that the project would take this long to complete.
This was a project with friends and good people moving on from it to other things: “Paddy” Rooney and other board members and YCHC staff retiring; our own Dan Waltersdorff who served on the YCHC board, then off, back on for another term, and off again before completion of the project; and multiple architectural designers and construction project managers.
The project endured a couple of fundraising challenges, design holds, a worldwide pandemic, and literal “pitfalls.” Yes, the floor actually fell into the unknown underground tunnels while excavating for a display pit plus many other underground pipe tunnels and equipment spaces were uncovered. Because of that, we now know where the other smokestack bricks are buried for eternity.
There was also the unique privilege of attending the opening gala “A Night to Make History” and the attendees in our “black ties & cocktail dresses,” witnessing the speeches of congratulations and gratitude, the live jazz music, the themed food set-ups, open bars, and meeting my Historical American Hero Ben Franklin. One of the displays we saw that opening night recognized my neighbor’s manufacturing contribution to York’s history (Sunrise Soap Company). My wife found a copy of the Society of Farm Women of Pennsylvania Cookbook just like the one that my mother gave to her not long after we married, and she still uses it today.
For some reason, it is the only project after all these years that would wake up in the middle of the night, reminisce, be proud of my profession, and want to write all of this down.” said Robert A. Sells, PE, CSI.
To learn more about this project visit here.