What is the New Structure in Watson Park?

If you've driven through town in the last two weeks, you've surely noticed a partially complete wooden structure taken shape at the center of Watson Park, across from the Merrimack Fire Station and Swan Chocolate.

Thanks to a campaign by the Rotary Club of Merrimack and the generosity of numerous volunteers and businesses offering steep discounts on materials, and their expertise for little to no cost, that structure is soon to be a brand new pavilion designed to allow families to enjoy the large swath of green space situated in one of the busiest parts of town.

This 900-square-foot timber frame pavilion will be the perfect setting for outdoor learning, musical performances, small theater group performances and more.

“When Marge Chiafery (Merrimack schools superintendent) heard 900-square-feet, she lit right up and said 'That's a classroom,'” said Rotarian Peter Flood, who is spearheading the project.

And that is something the pavilion committee has envisioned, Flood said, giving the example of having, say a naturalist who is putting on a program about frogs. Flood said the pavilion will be open to the community to use for a variety of reasons, and for that matter, Merrimack's Girl Scouts are the first scheduled to do so in June.

The pavilion is part of a master plan that was drawn up by the Watson Park Committee, that would fill a need for a space for community performances and events. With the 360 degree visibility around it, and plenty of space for lawn chairs and the community to gather, Flood said the pavilion's pentagon shape allows it more square-footage that if it had been a more traditional hexagon.

The shape, he said, was one of the hardest things about the design of this project.

Flood said he figured to make the pentagon, it was a matter of designing 10 right triangles to fit together. But it was much harder than that, he said.

“Pentagon's are very difficult. There's formulas you have to follow, mathematical formulas,” Flood said. The engineering was very, very well done by Bensonwood ... (The Pentagon) occurs in nature repeatedly, but nature finds ways to do things we find very hard to accomplish ourselves.”

But Bensonwood, the company out of Walpole that provided the wood frame kit to put up a pavilion in town, will have an impressive and iconic type of project to show for at the end of this. The frame for the pavilion was pre-cut and designed at the company's shop, and then transported to Merrimack to be put up. But not before a couple beams supporting the roof could be hand-carved by volunteer and master woodworker Chuck Mower to share core values of the Rotary and the memory of one of Merrimack founding Rotary members, Roger Duhamel.

On Saturday, April 27, a pavilion raising was held, which allowed a group of volunteers to get the outline of the frame up. The roofing was started on April 28, but they underestimated the difficulty of putting a roof on. A such, Flood is not certain when the structure will be complete, but as weather permits, work will continue each Saturday until the roof is up, the shingles laid.

Work by Dean LaValley, a Goffstown resident, and Merrimack Rotarian Rick Craword who've been instrumental in helping to get the roof up has been so important Flood said.

All of the volunteer man hours and the materials given to them at cost has saved this project thousand of dollars, he said.

Abbie Griffin Park Bandstand, he said, which is half the size of this new pavilion, cost somewhere around $55,000 some 20 years ago, he said. When all is said and done with the frame here, $40,000 is the actual cost they are looking at, but it would be thousands more if not for the generosity exhibited in erecting this pavilion.

“By the time we get finished the volunteer labor will probably equal the amount of money it has cost for the foundation timber frame kit and the shingles for the roof,” Flood said.

In addition to the volunteers who've been working to put up the pavilion, Lakeview Materials gave them enough highway grade gravel to compact the whole foundation, Rob Lavoie of All Outdoors Landscaping did all the land prep for the foundation and the concrete foundation was poured at cost.

“There is all this value is going into what's going to be a very nice structure,” Flood said.

The $40,000 figure, however, is not the final cost of the pavilion and it's construction is not yet the end either.

Flood said the pavilion will eventually be lit and wired for sound, but that money has not been raised yet. He said previously that he expects the sound/electrical wiring and some landscaping around the pavilion to cost another $6,000-$8,000 and they are looking for donors interested in helping with that aspect.

He's not sure when they will tackle that project after the amount of work that has been put in already.

“We'll probably want to take a breather,” he said.

To contribute to the pavilion, checks can be made out to the “Merrimack Rotary Foundation,” P.O. Box 181, Merrimack, NH 03054. Please place in the memo line the word “pavilion.”