By Julie Shapiro
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
TRIBECA — The city is chopping six months off the massive five-and-a-half-year Hudson Street water main project, after local residents and business owners called the construction a "nightmare."
"We can’t not do the work," Shane Ojar, a deputy director at the city Department of Design and Construction, told Community Board 1 Wednesday night. "What we can do is shave some of the time off."
The city plans to consolidate the work by reconstructing Beach and Franklin streets this year, rather than waiting until the next phase of construction in 2013.
Under the new schedule, the project should finish by the summer of 2015, rather than that winter, the city said.
Peter Braus, chairman of CB1’s TriBeCa Committee, called the new plan a "net positive" for the community. The committee unanimously passed a resolution in support of the change.
The work on Franklin Street, between Hudson and Greenwich streets, could start as soon as February and should be complete by the summer. The work on Beach Street, also between Hudson and Greenwich streets, will start several months later and finish this fall.
On both streets, the city plans to upgrade water mains and utilities, and then install new cobblestones.
Ojar also said Wednesday that the city would not move a construction staging area off of Hudson Street between Franklin and N. Moore streets.
Residents of that block had requested the city find another place for the staging area, because they felt their block was being unfairly burdened with construction.
However, none of the other potential staging sites panned out, so the city will leave the storage where it currently is.
Despite the slightly shorter schedule for the overall project, many residents are still unhappy about the construction, which is bringing noise, dust, water shutoffs and other inconveniences to the neighborhood.
But Ojar emphasized that the work was necessary to connect TriBeCa’s water mains to the new Third Water Tunnel, which would start feeding water to the city within the next few years so the city could repair the existing tunnels.
"This is a major project the city is undertaking," Ojar told the residents. "It’s not that we want to make your lives a living hell."
