2020 Update #57

Working Toward a Winter Shutdown

The Highlights

• The Punch List

• Sign, sign, everywhere a sign

• Safety first

Work resumed this week following last week’s break for the Thanksgiving holiday as the Kubricky crew continued to prepare the downtown construction site for winter while completing those tasks that can still be accomplished in colder weather.

Let’s take a look at what’s being accomplished as we turn the corner into the final month of 2020.

Your Weekly Construction Update

Kubricky is working through a fairly extensive “punch list”—a to-do list focused on general clean-up and touch-up and ensuring that the construction site is safe before we shut the project down for winter later this month. This includes, for example, fencing off the Triangle Park and Printer’s Alley construction areas and securing the fences with sandbags and ties.

On that note, you’ll notice that the chain-link fence along the perimeter of Triangle Park has been moved up onto the sidewalk to provide more room for motorists parallel parking on Merchants Row and Main Street. The sidewalks themselves, however, will remain closed and unplowed during winter to avoid degrading the new concrete with salt.

Earlier this week, as shown in our first photo below, Kubricky finished tying rebar on the north end of the project in preparation for pouring the concrete cap walls next year that will form a finished top for the precast concrete u-walls.

As we’ve discussed in the past, the purpose of rebar is to increase the tensile strength of concrete, helping it resist cracking and breaking.

Subcontractor Lafayette completed installing signs at our border crossings and interstate ramps regarding quarantine restrictions for out-of-state visitors entering Vermont and returned to Middlebury this week to install additional roadway and parking signs, including the Stop, One Way, and No Left Turn signs at the top of Merchants Row in front of Town Hall Theater, as shown in our next photograph below.

Lafayette also installed a coated steel chain-link safety fence behind the retaining wall blocks on the south end of the project on the South Pleasant Street side of the rail line, as shown in our third photo below. Lafayette will finish up its work next week.

South of town Kubricky continues preparing the Fifield Farm marshalling yards on Route 30 for winter.

Last week I noted the project team’s success in completing this summer’s construction safely and on time. To add some weight to that accomplishment, Kubricky reports that 60,000 work hours into the main project, with the exception of one broken toe, the project has been accident free.

Finally, on the note of safety—while we can probably all agree that initiative and ingenuity are good qualities, it would probably be best not to attempt the kind of feat illustrated in our final photograph of the day.

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.