Melissa Bailey Photos
Waitress Medhapond Jaouchaiyakul: “It feels like eternity.”
Frustrated business owners will have to wait another year until their customers can reach them via the State Street bridge, thanks to yet another delay in a years-long construction project at the Mill River.
The bridge that takes State Street over the river won’t reopen until next summer, the state Department of Transportation (DOT) announced in a “status update” distributed Monday by email by East Rock Alderwoman Jessica Holmes.
The new date is three years after the original expected completion date. The continued delays have hurt businesses on upper State Street, caused traffic problems, and created a “dead space” that has attracted crime, according to Holmes.
“It feels like eternity,” said waitress Medhapond Jaouchaiyakul.
From her post at the Rice Pot restaurant, she sees a daily parade of confused drivers blow past the “Road Closed” signs, then make U‑turns where State Street dead-ends at the Mill River, just past Lawrence Street.
No matter how much time elapses, she said, “it has not reduced the amount of confusion” among drivers.
Rice Pot owner Roger Jaouchaiyakul said the bridge has not affected most customers, who arrive at the restaurant from East Rock or lower State Street. Out-of-town customers, however, get thrown off by their GPS devices when they try to reach the restaurant via the State Street exit off of I‑91.
The bridge has been closed since October 2010, set to be replaced due to structural problems. Work was supposed to take one year, according to the DOT. Due to a litany of problems, the state last year revised its completion date to the “end of 2013.”
Roadblocks
Here’s how the state explained the delays in its status report, dated Aug. 2:
The state hired C.J. Fucci, Inc in April 2009 to replace the bridge. The project called for removing structural supports that held up the old bridge, and replacing them with a single-span bridge of “precast concrete beams.” As part of the project, the road on both sides needed to be reconstructed to create two 10-foot lanes in each direction.
Work began in May 2009 and immediately hit a roadblock: Workers discovered they needed to relocate a 42-inch water main owned by the Regional Water Authority to make sure it wasn’t damaged by the construction work. Workers had to halt the bridge project while they moved the water main.
The water main was out of the way by September 2010, and the bridge closed in October 2010. Demolition and reconstruction was supposed to take a year.
But after the bridge was closed, C.J. Fucci encountered another problem in February 2011: An original plan to create a “cofferdam” to divert water from the work area didn’t work out as workers had hoped. There was a “conflict” with the piles supporting the I‑91 bridge, which passes over State Street right at the river.
The next problem arose in June 2011. As soon as workers started digging, they discovered the groundwater was contaminated and needed to be treated. Again, the bridge work was put on hold. The state completely redesigned the plans for the abutments, this time using steel piles (or poles).
Workers tested out driving the new steel piles into the riverbed in July 2012. The contractor bought the new piles and began to drive them into the western riverbank in January 2013.
Again, workers hit a problem: When they started driving the piles, they noticed the vibrations were causing nearby structures — including the supports for the I‑91 bridge — to “settle.”
“The settlement was a very serious issue” because of the danger posed to I‑91, the DOT wrote in its status update.
Work halted again as the state went back to the drawing board. Workers had to shut down a water line and figure out how to drive the piles without causing the interstate to collapse. The state decided on a new solution: Ditch the steel piles and go with “micro piles,” which are drilled — not hammered — into the ground.
As of Aug. 2, C.J. Fucci was “coordinating” with a subcontractor on plans to drill in the new micro piles. C.J. Fucci is revising its projected timeline for review by the state.
Meanwhile, the state offered this preliminary forecast: Workers will finish drilling the micro piles in the spring of 2014.
The bridge would then reopen to traffic in “mid-summer of 2014” — “barring any further complications.” The entire project would be finished by the fall of 2014.
“Not Happy”
News of the delays rippled down State Street Monday morning.
Bryan Smallman, who runs a woodworking shop at 1041 State St., pronounced himself “disappointed” in the latest delays.
He said the poor signage has left drivers continually driving past his shop, only to U‑turn when they hit a dead end.
As if on cue, three cars in a row blew by his shop a few minutes later, hit the dead end, and retreated.
The dead-end has created a dead space that attracts crime, he said. Thieves recently broke into the former Star Supply warehouse with power tools and ladders and stole copper pipes, he said.
Two businesses have folded on the other side of the bridge, in the Cedar Hill neighborhood, in part due to the bridge closure, according to East Rock Alderman Justin Elicker.
Fred Walker (pictured with his wife and business partner, Patricia Walker) said his business has suffered “substantially” from the construction work.
Walker said walk-in business to his restaurant has dropped off. And catering customers, who tend to be “affluent older women,” have trouble with the detours: The signs send them down James Street, under the dark Lombard Street bridge, which can be “scary” after dark, he said.
Walker said he toured the construction site with the contractor just two months ago. He said it helped to know the reason behind some of the delays.
But “I’m still not happy,” he said. “It’s taking forever.”
“This kind of stuff happens,” he said of the construction snafus. “But it doesn’t seem like there’s any sense of urgency.”
Alderwoman Holmes, who represents the area, said neighborhood complaints have included extra exhaust and traffic due to U‑turners and detours; businesses suffering a drop in customers; and increased crime around the river.
Drivers who want to head up State Street to the Cedar Hill neighborhood, or to the Hamden DMV, now have to go through confusing detours, she noted.
Holmes said in a recent tour, she encountered trash from people doing drugs down by the river. Homeless people have been camping down by the river. The problems didn’t start with the construction work, she said, “but having the bridge be closed just exacerbates those problems.”
State DOT officials couldn’t be reached Monday to respond to neighborhood frustrations. Holmes said she plans to set up a neighborhood meeting in late September or early October to discuss the project.