The Staunton Rotary Club and the City of Staunton will dedicate a new Centennial Pavilion at Montgomery Hall Park in Staunton on Friday.
The competed pavilion, planned, designed, and constructed entirely with private funds generated by the Staunton Rotary Club, will be formally dedicated and presented as a gift to the city by immediate past president Dustin Didawick, and accepted on behalf of the city by Assistant City Manager Leslie Beauregard and Parks & Recreation Director Chris Tuttle.
The Staunton Rotary club was chartered by Rotary International on Aug. 1, 1920.
“Our Club determined that the best way to celebrate our centennial was to give back to the city we all love,” Didawick said. “We hope that the Staunton Rotary Centennial Pavilion will be an enduring community resource for family gatherings, picnics, sports assemblies, and meetings of all kinds.”
Staunton’s youth and families will be able to take advantage of the pavilion’s location near the park’s swimming pool, basketball courts, tennis courts and playground. There is easy access to parking, rest rooms and the new Pavilion meets ADA access standards.
The Centennial Pavilion may be brand new, but it was fashioned using old-time timber frame construction methods, at the instigation of Centennial Committee Chairman Hal Aaslestad, who worked tirelessly to plan and oversee the project for the better part of a year.
This historic building method features heavy oak timbers fitted together only by mortise and tenon joints and was chosen in part for the intended location of the pavilion. C
“The timber frame construction of the Pavilion’s historic building method reflects the interior of the nearby Montgomery Hall manor house that was constructed around 1820,” Aaslestad said.
The construction was headed by Col. Grigg Mullens of Virginia Military Institute. Col. Mullen has led the construction of approximately 40 such structures in western Virginia. The structures are generally prepared and erected outdoors over an intense two-week period.
The Centennial Pavilion features a large, locally crafted Rotary International wheel and bronze plaque acknowledging the contributions of the Staunton Rotary Club and four other Rotary clubs in this area: Staunton-Augusta County, Waynesboro, Waynesboro-East Augusta County, and Nelson County.
Rotary District 7570 and the Rotary Foundation provided major financial support in the form of a Collaborative Grant.
The plaque also acknowledges the many local individuals and companies who made significant in-kind and financial contributions to the centennial project.
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