By Adam Swift
City and state officials joined Revere’s public works employees to cut the ribbon on the new 38,000-square-foot DPW facility on Charger Street on Monday morning.
“This is a tremendous day for all of us,” said city Chief of Infrastructure and Engineering Don Ciaramella. “The city’s DPW and Water Department has been basically working without a facility for many years. With this new facility, I assure you the DPW and the Water Department will be running on all cylinders.”
Acting Mayor Patrick Keefe thanked Ciaramella for being a champion for the project for years.
“In 1984, the DPW moved down here to Charger Street from Broadway, it was an abandoned telephone company building,” said Keefe. “That building was private property and the city had good foresight to come down here and take over property and make it for future public use. Almost … 45 years later we are seeing the fruition of what is to come.”
Keefe said plans for the new DPW building began in 2012 with a City Council motion from Ward 2 Councillor Ira Novoselsky, with ground on the project being broken in 2022.
“People in the city are going to see the results of this building for 50 years, and we can finally say this is a place where people can work with dignity, no longer do they need tarps over their heads to protect computer equipment, no longer does equipment need to sit outside, multi-millions of dollars worth of investment,” said Keefe. “This building is going to service the needs of our community for years to come, and these are the types of investments we are going to continue to make in our community.”
State Representative Jessica Giannino talked about coming to the DPW facility with her father when she was young and saw the desperate need for repair.
She also thanked the men and women of the public works department for all they do for the city.
“I’m excited to see what this facility brings,” said Giannino. “I think it is a facility that they can grow into, I think it is a facility that will meet the needs for hopefully the next 30 years, and we are really excited to have these resources, because this impacts the entire city of Revere.”
State Representative Jeff Turco praised the work the public works employees do for the city, as well as the City Council for having the foresight to move forward with a new public works building.
“DPW buildings are not the easiest thing to prioritize funding for, but your Revere City Council made the decision to prioritize funding so you would have a building that would represent the first-class workers that we have with a first-class building,” said Turco.
