Despite the COVID-19 situation, the library’s construction project continues to move forward. Gilbane Building Company, the library’s construction management firm, is following all recommended guidelines to ensure that members of the trades, staff members, and the public are safe while work is performed. The library is doing its best to use this mandatory closure to its advantage to get certain aspects of the job done now to avoid more closures later and reduce the impact to our users.
Provided that the weather cooperates over the next few days, work will begin Thursday, March 26th to rebuild the library’s sanitary sewer lines. Originally, this was scheduled to be a weeklong service closure for the building later this summer, but we have been reworking the building project schedule to enable crews to get in and complete the work while the library is closed. That means that the planned sewer project closure for later this year will be greatly lessened or eliminated completely.
The library will also soon have crews working on excavation around the site. One of the projects includes reworking the water retention area to the south of the library building. Part of this project requires contractors to dig a trench through the parking lot. Normally, this would be an inconvenience to users, but if we can get the work done during the shelter in place order, there will be fewer complications for our users later.
It is likely that there will be future construction-related closures. For example, contractors will be reworking the library’s electricity connections to meet the needs of the new facility and will require a three to four-day shutdown at a future time.
Even though COVID-19 has forced us to close and change the way we operate right now, we are doing all we can to leverage the time that we have to better prepare for the future. Please stay tuned for additional construction updates.
