Ignacio Laguarda and Barry Lytton
STAMFORD — The demolition of one of the St. John’s Towers was expected to be complete after two weekends, but delays have stretched the work out into a month-long project.
Tuesday, city officials decided the tower would come down by the end of the week. Soon after, they immediately shuttered both lanes of Washington Boulevard citing safety concerns.
Officials decided to close all lanes of the major thoroughfare “for crews to address the partial collapse seen on the south side of the building,” said Arthur Augustyn, spokesman for Mayor David Martin.
After the partial collapse is rectified, the city will revert to the planned road closures and work schedule: 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. each night for the rest of the week. Martin said in a statement that resident safety is the city’s No.1 priority.
“We’re not satisfied with the condition of the building, so we have made the decision to close Washington Boulevard and have the demolition contractor address these concerns immediately,” the mayor said.
The demolition of the tower started Jan. 11, and only the northbound right lane of Washington Boulevard was planned for closure. The first phase, which would involve taking down the upper floors, was expected to be completed by Jan. 21.
But, the tear-down was unexpectedly halted a few days later, as workers were concerned that concrete connected to exposed metal and rebar would become dislodged and fall to the ground.
Demolition crews are taking down the main structure of St. John’s Towers by knocking it down floor by floor with a high-reach excavator.
The elevated sense of danger led officials to close both northbound lanes of Washington Boulevard and put the work on pause for the weekend of Jan. 18. Eventually, full demolition resumed on the weekends of Jan. 25 and Feb. 1, with all northbound and southbound lanes of Washington Boulevard closed.
Now, to expedite the project, demolition will continue every night this week. On Friday, Washington Boulevard will again close at 9 p.m. and stay closed over the entire weekend until 5 a.m. Monday.
The other two towers, still occupied, are not being torn down.
The developer behind the tear-down and the 414-unit apartment building to replace it said he would have preferred to get the demolition done over one week instead of spacing it out as it has.
Demolitions are safest and best controlled “the quicker we can get it to ground,” said Greg Belew, divisional resident for the New York tri-state area for Lennar Multifamily Communities, a subsidiary of homebuilder Lennar.
“The city and the state (Department of Transportation) as well were constraining us to the weekend demolition,” he said.
New Milford is paving: Is your street on the list?
Katrina Koerting
NEW MILFORD — Nine roads are included in the next round of road projects the town will begin this spring as part of the five year roads capital plan.
The work includes a mix of regular paving and reconstruction over the 8.9 miles. It is expected to cost $7.4 million.
Once the contingencies, 2.3 miles of local roads, inspections and design work for the 2020 plan are factored in, the town is looking to spend $10.7 million on roads in the next fiscal year, according to a recent roads committee presentation to Town Council.
This round of projects builds on lessons learned during this past year’s work, including ensuring the projects are designed by April and funding is there so construction can begin July1. This will help the projects be completed by Nov. 1 and before the snow falls.
A way to help this will be the new in-house engineers, as well as working with more outside engineers and contractors. The roads committee and town officials are also using pre-bid meetings more.
Survey work has been completed for all of the roads. Design work has been awarded for Fordyce Road, Geiger Road and McNulty Drive, Long Mountain Road and Second Hill Road. Bids are out for the design work for Erickson Road, Picket District Road, Mist Hill Drive and Overlook Drive.There will also be public input sessions for all of the roads.
Public Works Director Michael Zarba said they started this past season’s work later than planned because the design work wasn’t done until June and was expected to be done by May. This meant the bids were awarded in July and work started in September. Rain also delayed some of the work. This caused work on Long Mountain Road and Squire Hill Road to be rolled over to the upcoming construction season.
The town paved 7.2 miles in the current fiscal year for $6.5 million. Of this, 1.8 miles were reconstructed. There is still about $203,000 available.
“We’re doing the best we can with the dollars we’re given,” Zarba said.
The average cost per mile is expected to go up this year by $150,000 or so per mile. This is because there is more reconstruction planned than mill and pave, unlike last year, said John Oakes, the road committee’s vice chairman.
The most expensive piece is Second Hill, which is expected to cost $1.53 million and is about 8,080 feet of road. The cheapest is Mist Hill at $284,000 for about 3,750 feet.
The town is also scanning all of the roads over the next several years, building on the work started in 2017. This will help create a baseline for how well the roads are repaired and fairing.
The scanning is done by vehicles equipped with sensing technology, 3D cameras and optical devices that check pavement for stress, even in traffic.The streetscan is also now broken out in 500 foot segments to better reflect the road. This will lower the costs and helps with bidding the work because companies can see that the entire road isn’t poor, just a piece.“There’s progress going on and that’s why we want to look at this as a long term program to keep this going,” said John Whittman, chairman of the roads committee.