By Julie Shapiro
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
TRIBECA — The city is gearing up for a massive three-year water main project on Chambers Street, lower Manhattan’s main east-west thoroughfare.
This week the contractor started putting up signs warning of closures and doing other preparatory work, which will take two to three weeks, a spokesman for the city Department of Design and Construction said.
Then, the city will narrow Chambers Street to one lane of westbound traffic between West Street and West Broadway and begin digging up a water main installed shortly after the Civil War.
In addition to replacing the water main, the city will also upgrade other utilities, including old telecommunications and electric infrastructure, and add new trees and traffic signals.
Local residents and business owners are worried that closing lanes on such a central downtown street will snarl traffic and cause pedestrians to avoid the area, but they seem resigned to their fate.
“What are you going to do?” said Tomassino Acappella, 42, who co-owns the eponymous Italian restaurant at Chambers and Hudson Streets. “We can’t stop it. The only thing we can do is wait and see what happens.”
As of Tuesday afternoon, the city had installed a fence along the southern side of Chambers Street between West and Greenwich Streets and had put up several signs, draped in black plastic for now.
The first phase of the project, which will last for 18 months, affects only the two blocks between West Street and West Broadway. The second phase will shift the work east, to the blocks between West Broadway and Broadway.
During the project, the city will reroute the eastbound M22 bus to Warren Street, one block south.
