A recent seasonal fundraiser, “A Night of Miracles” at Miracle Bar at Twin River Casino Hotel led to a big announcement for Cranston High School West’s Alumni Association.

The CHSWAA fundraiser was held in conjunction with a Project Broken Wheel fundraiser. Project Broken Wheel takes old bicycles and fixes them for those who need bicycles in the community.

Councilman Ed Brady recognized the tremendous job done by Project Broken Wheel as he welcomed guests to the combined fundraising event.

Cranston High School West Alumni Association President David DiMaio thanked those who had lent their support, time and efforts to the fundraiser, including the night’s event coordinator, Erica Caligiuri for all of her continued time and dedication as well as all of the CHSW alumni who have supported the association over the past five years.

He also thanked Twin River and Tito’s Vodka for their support and donations that evening.

“Thank you to Twin River and Tito’s Vodka,” he said. “I want to thank everybody for coming out, the RI5 band, the Rob Davis Band, my board of directors at the Cranston West Alumni Association, Karen Casale, Ed Brady, Justin Erickson, Adam Lupino, and Amy Ricci. Thank you so much for coming, it’s been a whirlwind. Most of you know we’ve done the Cranston West auditorium and we have future projects coming.”

Tito’s Handmade Vodka and Twin River presented a check to the alumni association for $1,500 for their fundraiser. A check for $1,500 was also presented to Project Broken Wheel as well.

DiMaio called Council President Michael Farina to the stage to make the big announcement.

“Mike’s been a supporter, he’s a graduate, and Mike tonight is the main sponsor. He sponsored RI5 and the videographer because the alumni association wants to make sure that everyone can see here what we can get done,” DiMaio said as he turned over the stage to Councilman Farina.

“It brings me great pride to be here tonight as a 1996 graduate of Cranston High School West. I firmly believe in the public-private partnership that we strove for in doing the auditorium and I think we did a lot of work together, raising funds, the city helping out and kind of collaborating on the partnership together,” Farina said. “I was approached about a year ago by Dave DiMaio, working with the mayor and the administration from the school department, trying to figure out what’s next for Cranston High School West. Since I played football at Cranston West, the one thing that depresses me when I have to go to football games for my alma mater at the away school that I used to play against, even though I’m a citywide councilman, I love all students the same, I miss having football at Cranston High School West.”

Farina referenced the recent election and the bond referendum for parks and recreation which passed during that election.

“I have committed $950,000 of that $2 million dollar bond to a new turf football field at Cranston High School West,” he said.

His announcement was met with applause and cheers and DiMaio held up an artist’s rendering of the proposed new field.

“That’s the good news,” Farina said. “That bad news is, we can’t do it all ourselves, the city. This is where it gets back to the public-private partnership. We did so well together for the auditorium. I know the alumni association is going to work hard to raise the funds to help redo the stadium because if we can take care of the field as a city, we can get donations and work from everyone in the alumni association around the city of Cranston on the western side to help us redo the stadium so the stadium will match the fields.”

Farina expressed his confidence that a partnership will help to get the job done.

Referring to the artist’s rendering, Farina noted that the field was currently shown as being red, and he asked for feedback on that.

“We are trying to decide how we’re going to do this as we go forward,” he said. “A lot of work is going to go into this. We will continue to work with the director of administration, continue to work with the mayor and continue to work with the parks and rec director. We have a grant writer who will be looking for grants to try to help us offset this, but we’re probably going to be coming back to you in the next couple of quarters, looking to raise some money through the Alumni Association.”

Farina thanked all of the supporters and reminded them how important their support has been.

“We can’t do this without you,” he said. “Together we make Cranston the best place to live.”

DiMaio emphasized the goal of the CHSW Alumni Association in supporting the current students at West.

“We had great experiences at Cranston West. Cranston West made us the people we are today and we just want to pass that along to our kids and the current students,” he said. “We can’t do that without your help and we found a way to get the auditorium done. I was told it couldn’t be done, and it’s done. This is another project that along with the administration and the council who see the goodness that comes out of this and how a public and private partnership can be successful.”

He asked for volunteers to be ready to help with the project.

“They say it takes a village,” DiMaio said. “Well, it takes a Falcon and once a Falcon, always a falcon.”