BOSTON — Massachusetts Department of Transportation (MassDOT) has announced that Barletta Heavy Division has been named general contractor for Armenian Heritage Park on the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway. Construction is slated to begin this spring.
Barletta Heavy Division is a division of the Barletta Companies with headquarters in Canton. Barletta, founded in 1914, is a fourthgeneration family company. Among its many projects is the South Boston Maritime Park, approximately 1.3 acres and designed to provide public green space at the waterfront site. In 2004, Barletta received the Massachusetts Port Authority’s General Construction Contractor of the Year Award for “their excellent construction work exemplified their high quality, on budget, on schedule and safe work, while minimizing disruption to the traveling public and MassPort tenants.”
On December 31, 2010, MassDOT instructed Barletta to commence construction of the park, reported James Kalustian, Heritage Park Foundation president, at a recent board meeting. The 45-member Board of Directors comprises representatives from Armenian-American parishes and organizations within Massachusetts. During this announcement, Kalustian expressed his appreciation to Bruce Bagdasarian, Esq., for his legal work during the negotiations with MassDOT.
The Boston-based firm Tellalian Associates Architects & Planners (TAAP) is designing the Armenian Heritage Park. The initial concept was presented to the Board of Directors by the Foundation’s Design Committee and its chair, Don Tellalian, eight years ago. TAAP will oversee the Park’s construction in collaboration with Stantec Consulting, sub-consultants to TAAP for landscaping and civil engineering, John Soursourian, the foundation’s representative and MassDOT.
Armenian Heritage Park on the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy is designed to commemorate lives lost during the Armenian Genocide of 1915-1923 and all genocides that have followed and to celebrate the immigrant experience, paying tribute to those immigrants who distinguished themselves in the arts, sciences, commerce and public service, contributing to the richness of American life and culture.
Visitors to the park may relax on benches in the shade of trees, walk the labyrinth, a circular winding path paved in granite and set in lawn, take delight as children splash in the single jet of water at its center, or marvel at the 12-sided, abstract geometric sculpture, a split dodecahedron resting on a 16- foot-diameter reflecting pool.
