2021 Update #8

Good Weather, Good Progress

The Highlights

• Triangle Park concrete work nearly complete

• Rail platform construction and Route 7 paving begin next week

With the exceptionally fine early Spring weather this week, Triangle Park—the new centerpiece of downtown—took a significant step toward completion.

In our first photo of the week—taken as the rain arrived on Thursday—you can view the emerging “hardscape” section of Triangle Park, comprising exposed aggregate and conventional concrete sidewalks as well as the historic ashlar blocks salvaged from the rail corridor. Landshapes will be on site later next week to begin placing granite pavers in the recessed concrete areas.

Our second photo shows a new section of sidewalk connecting Triangle Park to the rest of the Town Green. Suddenly everything is green!

Next week Waters will wrap up its work on the Town Green side of Main Street, pouring a final section of sidewalk in Triangle Park and setting new granite curbing on Main Street just north of the Post Office crosswalk. We’ll start to see top soil brought in next week as well to create the “green space” in the park.

Across the street in Printer’s Alley, as you can see in our final photo of the week, granite curbing is now in place for the sidewalk and roadway that will form, with Lazarus Park, a new gateway connecting the Marble Works and Main Street.

From right to left in the photo will be a five-foot section of granite paving stones alongside the National Bank’s Duclos Building, the new sidewalk connecting Main Street and the Marble Works, and the roadway into the Marble Works (it looks narrow but is a standard 12-foot width).

Once Printer’s Alley reopens this summer, gone forever will be the days of pedestrians and motorists having to contend with one another in the same entryway to the Marble Works. What an improvement that will be!

Next to the new roadway, Lazarus Park began to take shape this week as Kubricky got underway with excavating the retaining wall at the bottom of the park that will surround the stone paver labyrinth funded by St. Stephen’s. That work will continue next week.

Wrapping up the week’s construction news, ECI began mobilizing in this week. Next week we’ll see the ECI crew begin forming up the concrete cap walls that will create the top surface of the U-walls north of Main Street.

Other Construction News

As we’ve been reporting, work on the Amtrak Rail Platform project will begin next week. The first order of business will be to excavate the platform area to its sub-base, followed by the setting of drainage structures and the concrete footings that will support the concrete piers that will in turn support the platform’s canopy. We’ll have photos to illustrate this process as it unfolds in the weeks ahead.

Watch for construction vehicles as you enter and exit the Marble Works on Middle Seymour Street starting next week as we will see a fair amount of activity as the rail platform construction gets underway.

Also starting next week is the VTrans project to repave our downtown state highways. As we reported last week, that project is now scheduled to begin on the south end with coarse milling of Route 7 between Creek Road and Cross Street, all done at night between 7 PM and 6 AM.

And speaking of night work, on Wednesday The Belden Company began working nights on the Court Street water main project, installing a new valve in front of the Painter House and 90 feet of new pipeline. Night work between the hours of 8 PM and 6 AM is expected to take place for at least the next two weeks.

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.