Construction Update - November 19, 2009

We have made some good progress on the 200 Block of S. Gay Street as evidenced by the picture above. Crews are in the process of finishing up utility work and other crews have begun forming up the new sidewalk. We hope to pour concrete here tomorrow. It is hard to get a picture that will reflect how the sidewalk will look but if you get by there you can notice the location of the storm drains which will be at the curb. The road will be much more narrow, I think, than most people are aware of to accommodate a wider sidewalk with bump-outs and tree wells.

Work has now also started on the western sidewalk in front of the VMC as we had hoped (see below). We have removed the sidewalk for a length of eight of the columns and are now removing the old deteriorating beams, many of which we have now found were not even attached and basically crumble when disturbed. It is very evident that this project is very much needed.

KUB crews are moving forward as we had expected in energizing the new electric service and we can expect them to notify customers on the block in the next few weeks as outages are scheduled. I hope to be in that loop as well so I can notify folks here.

During the initial phase we left the sidewalk over into the VMC apartments (see above).

The bridge we plan to install over into the VMC apartments has already been constructed (see above).

Holes were bored in the old sidewalk and saw cuts made in the hope that entire sections of sidewalk could be removed at once and, as you can see from the above photo, so far we have had success in that effort. If we are able to continue with this process, this will save much time as well as noise and dust. We plan to begin reforming the new sidewalk early next week and will take precautions this weekend in case of rain. When we graded and repaved the underground area, we made sure to grade it such that all water underground flows away from the buildings and onto the lower Jackson Avenue area.

I have set up our next meeting for the 100 Block Streetscapes Project for November 30, 2009 at 5:00 pm at the Emporium to discuss latest developments and other issues. I will post an agenda soon and a press release will go out this week.

I am happy to report that City Council approved the purchase of the parking lot there on Jackson Avenue with closing to occur in late December, 2009. We are discussing various ways to improve and control that lot to help meet the needs of the Downtown area.

As always, thanks for your interest.