By Julie Shapiro
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
SOUTH STREET SEAPORT — The massive four-year reconstruction of the Brooklyn Bridge is inundating lower Manhattan with traffic and noise, local residents said at a Community Board 1 meeting Tuesday.
The traffic comes from the overnight closures of the bridge’s Manhattan-bound lanes, which started last month and will continue for the next four years. The noise comes from the high-powered fans the city uses to contain the lead paint workers are removing from the bridge.
“It’s a constant hum that reverberates through Southbridge,” said Joe Morrone, 57, a Southbridge Towers resident. Morrone expects the noise, which starts at 6 a.m., to worsen as workers move to ramps that are closer to his building.
Joannene Kidder, with the DOT’s Division of Bridges, said the contractor was violating the city’s noise codes at first but recently installed additional sound barriers and ordered new equipment with better mufflers.
John Ost, another Southbridge resident, said noise is still a problem.
“It might have improved somewhat, but more needs to be done,” Ost said.
The $508 million overhaul of the landmark bridge includes a new coat of paint, wider approach ramps and stronger supports. The city started planning the project after the state rated the Brooklyn Bridge as being in “poor” condition three years ago.
One of the biggest impacts of the project is on traffic, which backs up as ramps to the bridge begin closing each weeknight at 10 p.m.
John Fratta, chairman of CB1’s Seaport/Civic Center Committee, said he recently waited seven light cycles without moving on the Avenue of the Finest, near the bridge’s entrance.
Luis Sanchez, DOT’s lower Manhattan borough commissioner, admitted that “things get a little crazy” in the first hour of the closure each night, but he said DOT has not received many traffic complaints.
The project will also include 24 full-weekend closures of the Manhattan-bound lanes, but specific dates have not been announced.
Another issue residents raised Tuesday is the amount of space the DOT is using for staging. The city already took over the Brooklyn Banks skate park on the Manhattan side of the bridge as well as the parks department's Drumgoole Plaza beneath the Brooklyn Bridge up ramp near Pace Unversity.
The DOT now wants to commandeer an additional 9,000-square-foot patch of the East River esplanade at Peck Slip.
Gary Fagin, who has lived in the Seaport for 25 years, said the DOT’s storage would have an “egregious” impact on view corridors from the historic district.
Kidder replied that the contractor definitely needs the space but will try to store unobtrusive material there, like gravel and sand, as opposed to taller pieces of equipment.
Several residents said they were worried the project would fall behind schedule, leaving the impacts on the community to linger for more than the projected four years.
Kidder said the construction got off to a late start, but the contractor is hoping to make up the time and finished as planned in 2014.
