2019 Update #29
Drilling Takes Time Off as Film Festival Arrives
Even construction activity took a back seat this week to the Middlebury New Filmmakers Festival, which got underway on Wednesday with Kids & Family Day at the Marquis Theater and continues at various venues around town through Sunday evening.
For a full rundown of the films being shown, see here. For a full rundown of this week’s construction and a look ahead to next week, read on.
Your Weekly Construction Update
This week Maine Drilling & Blasting continued drilling steel minipiles to stabilize the ground
behind the two Smith Housing Partnership buildings that sit alongside the rail line behind South Pleasant Street.
A second Maine D&B drilling rig—this would be the loud one you heard if you were downtown this week—began drilling holes for the dynamite charges that will be placed in the bedrock in and around the Main Street Bridge when blasting gets underway the weekend of September 14-15. More on that as we get closer to the date.
All drilling work came to a halt at the end of the day Wednesday as Kubricky prepared to minimize construction noise in central downtown for the start of the Film Fest. For the final two days of the week, Maine D&B shifted to the less-noisy operation of installing steel casing within the minipiles and then grouting the minipiles installed behind South Pleasant Street.
Over in Triangle Park Kubricky began installing the timber lagging that sits between the minipiles and stabilizes the soil behind it. That work will continue into next week in collaboration with Middlebury’s Nop’s MetalWorks.
Initial work on constructing a new town sewer line that will parallel the rail track below South Pleasant Street will get underway next week.
Finally, you may noticed a large storage tank now sitting in the Printer’s Alley area. That’s an 18,000-gallon “frac tank” whose purpose is to store and filter sediment from groundwater encountered during excavation of the rail corridor.
Notes from Around Town
This coming Saturday the Sheldon Museum will welcome Middlebury landscape and cityscape photographer Peter Vanderwarker, who will talk about landscape photography as a profession and his own award-winning career. His photographs of the Currier Farm in Danby are included in the Dan Kiley exhibit on view at the Sheldon Museum through September 1. The event takes places at the Town Offices at 2 PM on Saturday. You can read more about Peter and view some of his photographic work here.
Porter Medical Center’s contribution to our summer-long walking challenge continues next Tuesday at Mary Hogan with a brief talk by Helen Porter Rehabilitation & Nursing medical director Dr. Karen Fromhold on “Rehab at Helen Porter: Our Successful Team Approach.” Things get underway every Tuesday at 5:15 PM.
That’s all for today. See you downtown.
Please keep your comments and questions coming. Send me an email at jgish@townofmiddlebury.org and I’ll try to cover it in my next update.