After last month’s crane collapse, workers had to rip up parts of Worth St. to repair underground water and gas lines, in a bitter taste of what locals can look forward to when the city spends the next five years tearing up the entire length of the street to replace aging infrastructure.
BY YANNIC RACK |
Just weeks after a colossal crane crash brought terror to Tribeca, residents and business owners along Worth St. are worrying about the next construction project haunting their blocks — one that will drag on for years.
Locals fear the Worth St. reconstruction project, which is scheduled to start this spring and run until 2021, will bring disastrous disruption to an area that is still reeling from the recent crane wreck.
“I think the people in my building have just had enough. We’re just sick of it,” said Jason Tuchman, who lives at 13 Worth St., on the block where a 565-foot crawler crane keeled over and killed a man three weeks ago. “I understand that cities need to do work. But I think that the scale and the scope of this project is too much, especially after the crane collapse,” he said.
The city is planning to tear up nine blocks of Worth St. between Hudson St. and Park Row to replace old water mains, catch basins, and sewers below the street, as well as reconstruct the street, sidewalks, and curbs.
A spokeswoman for the city’s Department of Design and Construction, the lead agency on the project, couldn’t confirm a full timeline for the work because the procurement process is “still in preliminary stages,” but she said construction would start in the spring.
That’s considerably later than originally planned. Last spring, city officials told Community Board 1 that the $90-million project would start in late 2015.
Back then, D.D.C. community liaison Norberto Acevedo Jr. warned members of the board’s Tribeca Committee that there would be disruptions along the street to traffic, bus stops, parking, deliveries and occasionally water service — which would be shut off for up to eight hours at a time.
For business owners along the street, that spells disaster.
Café Gusto owner Sammy Ayoub worries that years of reconstruction work on Worth St. will drive away his regular customers.
“It’s very bad, you just don’t know what’s going to happen,” said Sammy Ayoub, the owner of Café Gusto at 111 Worth St., between Broadway and Lafayette St.
Ayoub, who branched out to Tribeca from his original location on John St. in the Financial District a year ago, said he feared losing his regular customers if the street was closed off.
“We live here week to week, to cover the rent. It’s going to be very tough,” he said.
A block away, at the family-run T. Kang Taekwondo Center at 85 Worth St., owner Cristina Kang said she was wary of going through the same ordeal other businesses had on nearby Hudson and Chambers Sts. — which saw their own reconstruction projects drag on for years before they were finally finished last year.
“Are you kidding? That’s going to be a really bad problem for us, like when they did it on Hudson,” Kang said. “A lot of parents drop their kids at the curb, or have the Uber drivers pick them up, so that’s going to be a big problem for us. It’s going to bother everybody,” she said.
Cristina Kang, owner of T. Kang Taekwondo Center, says that the months of disruption expected from the project could drive her out of business.
In the days after the crane crash earlier this month, Kang said many parents thought the center was closed and stayed away.
“When they closed streets for the crane, our business went crazy, from Friday to Sunday,” she said, adding that facing the same disruption for months at a time would drive her out of business.
The crane accident, which happened as the operator was lowering the crane due to strong winds, was enough to put off many residents on the surrounding blocks.
Tuchman, who runs a small post-production company in his building, said the prospect of months of the same disruption the neighbors suffered after the crane collapse seemed unfathomable.
“The noise in my office was unbearable, listening to the jackhammering and banging from these giant machines,” he said of the city’s cleanup operation after the accident. “If that’s what the construction will be like, it will be just torture for months.”
Brian O’Rourke, who also lives at 13 Worth St. and whose wife runs a cooking school there, said city officials have told community members at a range of meetings that the work would be done in stages.
“Their plan is eight months per block, [but] they’re going to have the streets running one way or the other,” he said. “But they won’t tell us if it’s only one block at a time, or even where it’s going to start.”
O’Rourke has lived on Worth St. for 29 years and said the project on nearby Hudson St. was already enough construction hell for one lifetime.
“It’s a disaster, we’re in constant reconstruction mode,” he said, adding that he was also concerned about security issues like the sensitive communications infrastructure inside buildings like 60 Hudson St. across the street — where the collapsed crane was used — or the former AT&T building at 33 Thomas St.
“I’m concerned about security, because all these things are right there and are going to become complications,” he said. “This thing is going to get slowed down, and that’s going to mean a much longer disruption for people. We’re just very concerned that this project will go on and on.”
State Sen. Daniel Squadron, who has pressed the city for better construction oversight in the past, said his office would work with CB1 to bring stakeholders to the table and work out any issues with the project.
“Lower Manhattan is no stranger to big construction projects. But they can also cause significant headaches for local residents and businesses,” Squadron said. “And as the recent crane accident tragically reminded, they can also raise serious safety concerns. I’m hopeful we’ll be able to engage the city and bring about a smoother process all around at Worth Street.”
But O’Rourke, who has attended previous meetings with reps from the D.D.C., has little hope the community conversations will bring about meaningful relief.
“They have no vision. There isn’t one schedule, or one person in charge,” he said of the city. “It is the Robert Moses mentality, and it pisses people off.”
