The Melrose Messenger

Beebe School Site Clear-Cut of Trees Due to Contractor Error

By Ellen Putnam

The construction of Melrose’s new police station at the Beebe School site got off to a rough start on Monday when a series of errors or miscommunications on the part of the project’s contractor and sub-contractors led to the site being clear-cut of trees, including trees that were not slated to be removed as part of the project.

The Public Safety Buildings Project has been in the works for years and is funded by a $130 million debt exclusion that was approved by Melrose voters in November 2023. The project will ultimately involve renovating or rebuilding all four of Melrose’s public safety buildings - the police station and all three fire stations. The first phase of the project, which involves rebuilding the Engine 2 fire station on Tremont Street and building a new police station at the site of the former Beebe School, started this week with the demolition of the Engine 2 building.

While the work on Engine 2 seems to be proceeding smoothly, site clearing at the Beebe School, which also began this week, saw a significant first-day error that will be challenging for the project to recover from.

In a sequence of events that is still not entirely clear - despite the contractor being repeatedly asked for an explanation - a sub-contractor hired a tree service, not to clear three small trees at the front of the property and put up construction fencing as they were supposed to, but to clear the Beebe School site of all trees, including those that were supposed to remain untouched throughout the project.

At the same time, workers were seen throwing debris from the second story of the Beebe School directly onto the ground, rather than into dumpsters, without first securing the site or, apparently, ensuring that the materials were not hazardous.

Neighbors reported that, despite repeated attempts at outreach, no one from the city or the project management team came to the site to deal with the tree clearing, which took place over the course of several hours and was not on the construction plan. They stated that the tree clearing only stopped, halfway through the removal of limbs from a large tree that is on the Milano Center side of a fence, when City Councilor At Large Elizabeth Kowal, who is an abutter to the Beebe site, and Ward 3 City Councilor Christopher Park, along with several neighbors, physically blocked the tree clearing. (Even then, they noted, the foreman threatened to call the police if they did not move.)

Now the neighborhood is reeling from the loss of tree cover and the loss of trust in the project team, and project managers are scrambling to adjust to the new reality of the site, including the possibility that the unplanned tree removal will destabilize a retaining wall above the project.

In an email to neighborhood representatives on Wednesday, Mayor Jen Grigoraitis wrote: “I was disappointed, discouraged and disgusted by the glaring and unacceptable errors made by the project contractors at the Beebe School site on Monday.”

“My administration and the city’s project team are exploring all avenues and options for remedy and redress under the terms of our contract and the law,” she went on. “The unacceptable and unprofessional conduct of the contractors on site at the start of this week was entirely out of keeping with the terms and stipulations of our project contracts and agreements. I intend to utilize every available lever to make this right on your behalf and on behalf of our whole city.”

On Wednesday evening, Kowal and Park led a neighborhood meeting that included City Project Manager Denise Gaffey; Police Chief Kevin Faller; architects from Dore + Whittier; and representatives from Vertex, the Owners’ Project Manager, and M. O’Connor Contracting, the general contractor. At the meeting, neighbors were able to share their concerns and hear the officials’ and contractors’ responses.

With most of the neighbors’ ire directed at the table where the representatives from Vertex and M. O’Connor sat, the meeting sometimes veered into anger, heated exchanges, and strong language. (We have edited some language to ensure that our publication remains family-friendly.)

Neighbors expressed the lasting damage of Monday’s error, calling it “heartbreaking,” “devastating,” and “a betrayal.” They reflected on how difficult it was to build trust between the neighborhood and the city on the police station project, and expressed that this incident has broken that trust, perhaps irrevocably.

One neighbor said, “We invited you into our collective home, and you trampled on it.” Another neighbor, who is in her 70’s, reflected that, after the trees that had provided shade to South High Street (on the hill above the Beebe School property) were removed this week, she does not expect to live to see shade return to her street.

Chief Faller also expressed his anger at the situation. “We started off on the wrong foot coming into this neighborhood, but I thought that was behind us,” he said, “Now we have to deal with this. It’s not about the trees - but it is about the trees. Everything has been cut down - the trees, and our trust. Those strong roots are gone.”

Gaffey reflected on all the time that she spent with the project’s architects and engineers determining how green space could be incorporated into the design and how to preserve as many of the site’s trees as possible. “So many of us spent countless hours on it, and to see what happened on Monday is just devastating. I feel this both personally and professionally - I’m a resident in the community, and I’ve worked for the city for 28 years trying to improve our quality of life. It hurts me viscerally.”

Despite being repeatedly asked for an explanation for how Monday’s events could have transpired, representatives from Vertex and M. O’Connor did not provide one.

For one, despite the project team having previously stated that a Vertex representative would always be on site, the person who is intended to be Vertex’s site representative at the police station site is not scheduled to start until next Monday. Bryan Fors, the project manager from Vertex, did not offer an explanation for why work was allowed to begin before that person was scheduled to start.

Krystal Burrows, the Executive Vice President of M. O’Connor, stated that the error “shouldn’t have happened” and blamed it on a miscommunication between the subcontractor who had been hired to clear the site and the tree removal service they had brought in. She claimed that the site supervisor from M. O’Connor was present at the site, although she stated he “did leave the site, which is against protocol.” However, she did not offer any explanation for why the site supervisor, if he was, in fact, present at the site on Monday, did not stop tree clearing that was not in the construction plan and took hours to execute. (That site supervisor was not present at Wednesday night’s meeting.)

Many neighbors grew frustrated with the lack of clarity from Vertex and M. O’Connor. “It’s clear that you were not prepared to answer our questions tonight,” said one neighbor, “and that speaks to the fact that you just don’t care.”

“You knew this happened on Monday,” added Kowal, “and here you are, on Wednesday night, with no answers for us.”

Burrows did state unequivocally that M. O’Connor will pay to rectify the situation, including for the project architects to draw up new plans. However, neighbors noted that M. O’Connor is unlikely to cover indirect costs like their higher utility bills in the summer, without trees to keep their homes shaded, and diminished property values due to the loss of the trees.

The meeting’s one positive point came when the project architects at Dore + Whittier - who had nothing to do with the contractors’ error - shared their confidence that they will be able to come up with a restoration plan, in collaboration with the neighbors, that will replace at least some of what was lost.

One neighbor noted that she had seen one of the architects walking the site on Monday evening to survey the damage. “That means a lot to me,” she said. “It means you care about this project.”

For the remainder of the week, M. O’Connor will be setting up construction fences and rodent control measures - and representatives from M. O’Connor and Vertex did not explain, despite repeated questions, why those steps were not taken before site clearing began. (Currently, most of the site is secured only with police tape.)

Beyond that, the question of who will be in charge of the project moving forward remains unanswered. While both M. O’Connor and Vertex expressed their desire to continue working on the project, neighbors called for M. O’Connor, at least, to be fired from the project.

However, the rules for public contracts are somewhat arcane, and leave municipalities with little flexibility to hire a better contractor over a less expensive one - or to fire a contractor, unless they have very clearly broken their contract. Mayor Grigoraitis’ statement suggests that the city will be looking into whether they can fire the contractor from the project, but they may not be able to without a protracted legal battle. (Residents may remember that the work on Engine 2 was delayed by a few months after a contractor sued the city over their exclusion from the bidding process.)

“The optics of what we saw tonight were insulting,” reflected one neighbor, noting what he saw as a lack of preparation and attentiveness from the Vertex and M. O’Connor representatives - including that they did not have key construction documents available for reference at the meeting and none of them appeared to be taking notes on what community members had shared.

“I just can’t think how you can build trust back after all of this,” he added. “You guys really messed up.”

Posted April 9th, 2026