Reconstruction at the intersection of Chambers and Hudson streets. Photo: Carl Glassman
The seemingly endless traffic, pedestrian and business disruption known as the Chambers Street reconstruction project will end even later than projected.
City officials, overseeing the complex replacement of two 150-year-old water mains and the intertwined utility work that goes with it, said that the neighborhood would get its street back by the end of next year. The work, which began in the summer of 2010, was originally expected to end this summer.
At a meeting held last month for residents and business owners affected by the project, Tom Foley, assistant commissioner for the city’s Department of Design and Construction, said that part of the delay is due to unexpected repairs to a gas main.
“On paper that gas main looks great—it’s only 40 years old,” Foley said. “Then once it’s exposed, voilà, let’s take care of it now while that area is excavated.”
Then there was Hurricane Sandy, which diverted crews to other parts of the city.
“One event like a Sandy pushed us back several months,” Foley said.
Chambers Street intersections, the sites of crisscrossing utilities where hand excavation is often required, are especially slow-going. Chambers and Church will be the last to be completed, next summer. Construction at Chambers and West Broadway, which has taken over part of Bogardus Plaza, is due to be finished in November. But Chambers Street work between the intersections should be done by this summer. By Memorial Day, the construction fences along the street will be down, Foley said.
Hal Bromm, who lives at West Broadway and Chambers, called on the Department of Transportation’s representative at the meeting, John DeLucia, to close Chambers Street to traffic entirely in order to get the work done faster. As it is, he said, the single lane of cars are forced to crawl down the street. “Only idiots are driving on Chambers Street,” he said, “and the bus could be rerouted.”
“Closing it is going to make the other streets worse,” DeLucia said. “You’re going to make Reade Street worse, you’re going to make Murray Street worse.”
But at the insistence of Bromm and others, DeLucia agreed to study the possibility of closing the street.
Foley said construction is being “expedited” with more daytime and weekend work, and most sleep-depriving night work is coming to an end.
In the meantime, Craig Baro, owner of Cosmopolitan Café at Chambers, near West Broadway, said the disruption, which has included gas leaks into the restaurant, has nearly done his business in.
“The mountains of garbage, the wind blowing the fences down, the rats, it’s really gotten horrific,” he said.
“We understand the hardship in terms of what this construction has brought,” Foley said.