Years from now, the 27 students in Chesterton High School’s building trades class can walk by the iconic bandstand in the town’s Thomas Centennial Park and say they played a role in refurbishing it.
Chesterton High School’s building trades students have worked on several public project sites over the years.
They built a garage and shelter at Dogwood Park for Chesterton’s Parks Department and are currently finishing up a new fishing pier at Lakeland Park in Burns Harbor.
But the bandstand at Thomas Centennial Park has probably been the most high-profile project for the building trades class.
“It’s right downtown, it has a lot of historical value. The whole town’s eyes are focused right there on the corner,” said Christian Lambersie, Duneland’s building trades teacher.
Lambersie said there was a real sense of “civic pride” attached to working on the bandstand.
For 102 years, the bandstand has anchored Thomas Centennial Park in the heart of Chesterton, right by the railroad tracks, which were vital in the town’s history.
That’s a lot of Northwest Indiana winters to weather.
“The structure has been deteriorating in recent years and desperately needed attention,” said Tyler McLead, Chesterton’s parks superintendent.
McLead said he knew when he became the town’s parks superintendent in 2022 that the bandstand would be a priority project.
It was decided that bringing the students in to help was the best path forward, McLead said. The job was estimated to cost $30,000 and would have been higher without student labor.
When the bandstand was built in 1924, downtown business owners paid for the materials and local contractors donated their labor. So having the supervised students give their labor follows a historical precedent.
“The experience gained will provide these students with not only valuable technical expertise but also a deeper understanding of the importance of preserving local history. I’m confident this project will have a long-lasting positive impact on Thomas Centennial Park, our downtown and the Duneland community,” McLead said.
“Our department deeply appreciates the trades program, and we look forward to continuing our successful partnership.”
Professionals were hired to do the roofing and electrical work on the bandstand.
Students began work last fall on rebuilding the stairs and handrails.
Lambersie said they also worked on the ceiling, scraping and painting it.
The most time-consuming part of the job was installing architectural stone all around the octagonal base.
Lambersie and his students say that dealing with the weather was one of the tougher parts of the job. It could be 78 degrees and sunny one day and plunge to 42 degrees and windy the next.
“It definitely had its ups and downs with the weather,” said Harrison Meeks, an 18-year-old junior who was the student foreman for the project.
Meeks said there was a definite measure of satisfaction derived from the project.
“I built that. If I got grandkids, I can tell them that,” Meeks said.
Cole Grish, a 17-year-old junior, said he can tell that their work made “a big difference” in the bandstand’s appearance.
Installing the stone at the base was the most difficult part of the job.
“It took us a good while but we got it done,” Grish said.
Hunter Duracz, 17, a junior, doesn’t live that far from Chesterton’s downtown, so he knows about the bandstand’s importance.
“It means a lot to me to be able to do something for the town of Chesterton, to make it look nice for everybody to walk by and enjoy it. It was a cool project,” Duracz said.
Duracz said he hopes that five to 10 years from now, “it still looks nice.”
De’Andre Pierce, an 18-year-old senior, said he thought it was “awesome” to be able to work on the bandstand.
When the bandstand is dedicated at 10:30 a.m. Friday, May 15, there will be a plaque with the names of the students who worked on the project.
“Our name is going to be on there forever,” Pierce said. “We can always say, we fixed that up together. No one can take that from us.”
Jim Woods is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
