Thursday, April 29, 2010

Construction Update - April 29, 2010

The 200 Block of S. Gay Street is now open after being closed for nearly a year. We had hoped to open it last Monday but all of the rain created issues with the striping required before reopening the roadway to traffic. We also had folks at the City cut back some of the tree branches around the streetlights while also adding some finishing touches to the street furnishings.



The eastern sidewalk at Vine Avenue was also completed with the colored concrete this past week and the crossing ramps are under construction.

We hope to finish up the last remaining section of the eastern sidewalk in the next two weeks so all of that sidewalk will be open for First Friday on May 7. The picture below is of the massive concrete slab poured to hold the foundation wall for the new sidewalk.

Work is also continuing on the Cradle of Country Music Park site with the short section of State Street being removed and converted to grass and trees. A new sidewalk will be constructed with curb and gutter along Summit Hill Drive next week (see picture below) across the now removed section of State Street. We will have a lane closure on Summit Hill from the entrance to the O.P. Jenkins parking area to just past Cradle of Country Music Park beginning Monday morning for around a week. Much of this work will be done during two evenings.







Parking meters will be bagged for 'no parking' on the O.P. Jenkins parking lot area beginning Monday so the Contractor can begin repaving this parking area on Tuesday. We plan to have it reopened on Thursday. This parking area will be in asphalt so the work should go quickly.


Work is continuing at the intersection of Vine Avenue in anticipation of finishing the first section of roadway on the 100 Block.


The old sidewalk along Cradle of Country Music Park has been removed and a new sidewalk has been built to better align with the new sidewalk on the 200 Block.






The picture below is of the 100 Block construction taken from Vine Avenue looking north. When I looked at this picture I thought about what a chaotic scene it must be for folks on the Block everyday. The good news is we have made significant progress and I know we have folks working who really know what they are doing.
Folks on the Block could help us out by reporting anyone they see marring our newly poured concrete surfaces. We have had many instances lately of someone taking a sharp object and slicing into the new concrete. When this happens, we have no choice but to take out that section and repour new concrete which further delays the project.
Work is going well enough now that we plan to move over onto the western sidewalk in front of the restaurants by the middle of next week. Work here will probably take around three weeks to complete. As we finish this work, we will also finish that section of roadway and begin the final colored concrete sections. This next section of work will end just past the Wells Fargo office at the door leading up to apartments.
I am tentatively planning a probable final meeting to update folks on our Streetscapes project at 5:30 pm on Monday May 10, 2010 at the Emporium. I will post more on that later.

Thanks for your interest.

3 comments:

  1. Thanks Rick. I think folks can start to get a pretty good idea of what it will look like when complete.

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  2. Can you please re-open (un-bag) the meters on Vine Avenue now? Since the 200 block of Gay St. is open, there's no need anymore (as there actually wasn't for at least three-quarters of the time it has been, since the Vine intersection remained open) for the portion of Vine east of Walnut to remain two-way.

    As the Sterchi lot is now fully accessible from Gay Street, it would be extremely helpful to those of us who are not Sterchians to have the public parking back.

    Thank you.

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  3. Rick,
    I can't remember from any of the drawings if there are any plans to adjust the sidewalk at the east end of the lot in front of O.P Jenkins. As the walk has been rebuilt along Summit Hill, it directs people back into the lot across the parking lot entrance, but the old sidewalk in front of O.P Jenkins has not been fixed from where it was cut off when the furniture store ajusted the turn radius into their loading dock. Presently, there are about three feet of sidewalk missing entirely, and there is no handicap curb cut. This needs to be addressed, or people will continue to wear a new path through the grass parallelling Summit Hill over to the end of State Street.

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