Office Hours This Week

While already mentioned in a previous blog post, the Village Office will be closed this entire week as Village Treasurer, Tammy McMillen, and Village Clerk, Tammy Morse, find themselves in Albany, NY at a New York State Conference of Mayors (NYCOM) seminar.

The MSP Office, however, remains open during its regular office hours (Tues/Thurs 8am-4pm and Fri. 8am-12noon) and can be accessed through the side door by the building's wheelchair ramp.

Forming up

Crews from curbing subcontractor, Geneva Curbing, began installing granite curbing by Ron Don's Village Pub and the Tompkins Trust Company Bank downtown this morning (09/29/06). The curbs by the bank delineate how far the new civic plaza extends out into the street. As the new curbs come into place crews can begin to fill in the digs behind the crubs with the soil/gravel fill required for the new surfaces; whether they be concrete, stone, brick, or asphalt.

While the rains yesterday did force the construction teams to leave early for the day, the weahter did not significantly hamper the construction schedule. Crews were able to return today and make good progress with the aforementioned Geneva Curbing teams placing new curb and Dekatherm teams preparing to approach the Elm St./Main St. intersection. Crews from A & K Slipform, the concrete subcontractor, are still scheduled to arrive on Monday October 2nd to begin the final sidewalk pours on the southside of West Main Street.

National Walk to School Day!

October is International Walk to School Month and on October 6th, 2006 (exactly one week from today) the Trumansburg Central Schools encourage all their students, staff, and faculty to take advantage of the new sidewalks and walk to shcool! More information on the walk and the cause can be found here. Celebrate safety, environment, health, and fitness just by walking to school!

In the meantime, here are some picutres of Trumansburg residents making use of the new sidewalks along East Main Street.

Thanks to MSP volunteer, John Ullberg for providing these pictures.

Weather Delays Today?

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric (NOAA) reports that major rains and thunderstorms are heading for Trumansburg today (September 28th 2006). You can see the weather report here. Crews from Economy Paving are quickly trying to get as much work possible before the rains arrive. With showers expected to continue into the weekend, work might de delayed/canceled tomorrow as well. Please check back with the blog later to see the status of construction in the rain.

Temporary Parking Signs Are Up

The Village ordered several plastic signs to help guide Main Street commuters to temporary parking areas during construction. Village DPW crews installed those signs yesterday and the Village/MSP encourage commuters to use those lots and patronize local merchants. Temporary lots include the Village Hall parking lot (Elm Street), Town Hall parking lot (behind the actual Town Hall building on Elm St.) and the Colonial Laundromat parking lot (on Main Street). Thank you to these organizations/businesses for temporarily volunteering their parking lots for Main Street commuters.

More FAQ Updates

Here are some new questions to merit FAQ status. A full list of the FAQ is available on our website. However, here are the latest to come to the blog.

Will there be construction in residential areas? Not in this phase of the project. The overall, ideal plans for Main Street have work running between each end of the Village. The overall plans also call for sidewalk extensions into some of the residential streets (Lake Street, Truman Street, South Street, etc.),however, the current construction focuses on the downtown core. As future funds come into the project, the MSP and Village can consider how to approach completion of the additional phases.

I am a business/home/property owner in the Village. Can I have the contractors do some minor work for me (repave my driveway, fill in a pothole,etc.) while they are in town? Property owners can approach the MSP with requests to take advantage of all the construction crews in town and have small, private work done. However, the MSP can only act as an intermediary and will get any interested citizen(s) in touch with Economy Paving. Any such work is not a part of the project and must be covered in full by the private land owner. Property owners should also understand that Economy Paving is a large company that only hires unionized workers and pays a prevailing wage. Hence, their prices reflect the kind of million dollar construction project they are accustomed to and might be out of the range of a home/small-business owner.

Can I still buy an engraved brick? YES! The MSP is currently taking orders for the second wave of brick orders to be installed in the spring/summer of 2007. Order forms are available at this website and the deadline for the second wave bricks orders is December 31st, 2006.

Office Hours Next Week

Next week (October 2nd, 2006-October 6th, 2006) the Village Office will be closed as both Village Clerk, Tammy Morse, and Village Treasurer, Tammy McMillen, will be out of town at a New York State Conference of Mayor (NYCOM) training session in Albany. While the Village Office will be closed, the MSP office will remain open during its regular office hours. To access the Main Street Project office, please use the sidedoor next to the Village Office's wheelchair access ramp. If you come up the front stairs from Main Street then you can take a right, pass the MSP Octagon, and then go through the screen door on your left.

Access to Parking

The Town of Ulysses has graciously allowed Main Street commuters and residents use of the Town Hall parking lot as a temporary parking lot during construction. The Town Hall parking lot is across from the Village's municipal parking lot (also open to commuters) right on Elm Street.

Economy Paving crews have also finished filling in trenches along the downtown stretch of East Main street. Crews have filled those trenches with asphalt fill for the pas few days, building up the layering needed for structural integrity. With the trenches filled and the street level, the MSP hopes this can alleviate some of the parking and traffic concerns.

Parking and Patronage

If you do not read The Ithaca Journal, then hit this link to read a story in the Saturday September 23rd 2006 edition of the paper concerning the Main street construction and resident concerns about it.

The Main Street Project thanks all the residents and business owners along Main Street for their patience throughout construction. The incoveniences are short term and the project is still on schedule with its completion window of October 22nd 2006 and October 31st 2006. The MSP does hope that Village residents patronize local businesses during construction and for as long as they live in the Village. This project is about improving Trumansburg's downtown core so that businesses can continue to thrive in a roadway friendly to both vehicles and pedestrians.

Customers of Main Street businesses can park in the Village municipal parking lot on Elm Street (across from Town Hall and behind the offices of Trumansburg Family Dentistry). That parking was closed for half a day last week in order for DPW crews to prepare it for repaving this week. The repaving of Village's municipal lot IS NOT a part of the Main Street construction, instead being a seperate Department of Public Works project. At the time of this post's writing, the Village DPW had not decided on a date for the actual repaving of the lot.

Bank Plaza Changes

The privet hedges along the Tompkins Trust Company office in downtown Trumansburg will come out on Monday (09/25/06) in order to create the proper grade necessary for the curb extension and future civic park. MSP Field Representative, Ward Hungerford, approached both the bank manager and the bank's landscaper about the logistics and their opinions on the removal. Both parties agreed to the removal, hence, allowing crews to remove the privet hedge on Monday. New hedges will be incorporated as part of the new landscaping design of the coming civic plaza. Anyone interested in how that will look should contact the MSP in order to arrange a viewing of the plans.

Work this Weekend

A small work team will be in front of the NAPA Auto parts store this Sunday September 24th 2006. The crew will prepare and reinforce the areas where utility teams plan to begin their digging on Monday September 25th 2006. An Economy Paving supervisor will be on site to monitor the work of this small subcontractor team.

Economy Paving and its subcontractors DO NOT intend to make weekend/after hours work a regular part of the job. The subcontractor working in front of the Napa store asked if it could do this work on Sunday in order to keep the project on schedule. This request was cleared by Economy Paving and the Village.

Notes from 09/21/06 Construction Update Meeting

The MSP, Village, Economy Paving, and C & S Engineers held a construction update meeting yesterday (09/21/06) as part of their bi-weekly series of update meetings. Here are some of the notes that came out of that meeting.

Sidewalks

Crews from Geneva Curb installed more curb in downtown Trumansburg,
going past the Elm Street/Main Street intersection and up to the Village
Office. Crews will then fill the pits running from the new curb out into the
street with asphalt tomorrow. This will finish up the roadway work along
those sections. The areas running from the new curb to the residences on
Main Street (i.e. where the sidewalks are) will be poured next week by the
sidewalk subcontractor,  A & K Slipform. While those new sidewalks won't be
poured till next week, crews will begin to pour some of the top soil and
structural soil needed around those areas for the future tree plantings.

Those white, spray paint semi-circles on the southside of West Main Street
(in front of Word of Mouth Catering, Marshall's Laundromat, etc.) are the
lines that mark where the engraved bricks will be going. Everything withing
the semicircle will be brick and everything outside of it will be new
concrete cidewalks.

As new sidewalks come down it is important to resist the urge to write
and/or leave handprints in the fresh, wet cement!  Doing so does constitute
vandalism and the Village police have been told to enfore this rule. If you
want to leave your mark on Main Street then consider buying an engraved brick!

North Side

There is activity on the north side (Ron Don's, Gimme! Coffee, Simply Red,
Masonic Temple, etc.) of Main Street as well. NYSEG teams began to lay down
the conduit for new utility lines in front of the bank. Just as with the
water main work, crews were delayed when they hit patches of concrete and
old structures underneath the street that were not on the plans! The NYSEG
crews plan to cross Union Street on Monday and the begin moving up that side
of the street. A good tentative timeline is to expect them to be in front of
Napa by Tuesday (09/25/06), Gimme! and Kinney by Wednesday (09/27/06). That
side of the street is much narrower than the southside of Main Street so it
will be tight with crews on the sidewalk and the businesses there. However,
the same rules apply as the other side of the street and no business will be
forced to close. Economy Paving is also considering having a "pedestrian
flagger" on that side of the street to make sure people can enter the
businesses with crews in front of them.

The activtiy around the bank concerns the curb extension that will increase
the pedestrian areas arond the bank creating a small civic plaza. If you go
by the bank today you can get a good sense of where the new curb line will
be by looking at where the traffic barrels are placed. 

Addendum to the FAQ

Looks like we might have to type up another FAQ soon because the MSP just identified some other key and frequently asked questions that merit a response. Please find below some more frequently asked questions brought to the MSP in September 2006. Enjoy the information!

Is there enough money to finish all the work happening on Main Street right now?

YES! All the activity happening on Main Street right now has been bought and paid for beforehand. No sidewalks will be left unfilled or streets left unpaved due to funds running out because that money has already been spent to guarantee that those streets and sidewalks be completed.

Then what is all this talk about fundraising?

The MSP has begun to draft and develop fundraising techniques to acquire more funds for future construction not included as a part of this current work. Any funds acquired now will be saved to fund future projects like the installation of streetlights and/or further extension of the sidewalks, for example.

Why were all the sidewalks ripped up at the same time? Why couldn't the contractors work the sidewalks in strips or small sections?

Contractors opened up all the sidewalks at the same time in order to keep the project on schedule and to make it easier for crews to access the utility lines below. Since the sidewalk work involves not only pouring new sidewalks, but also refurbishing the utility lines below, it would take too long to do the work in sections. By opening up the entire length of the sidewalks, one team can come and lay down utility lines followed by a curbing team that lays down new curb then followed by a sidewalk team that pours the new sidewalks and finishes the job.

Does that mean that the project is behind schedule?

Economy Paving and our engineering firm, C & S Engineers, admit that some work days have been lost to the weather (According to the North East Regional Climate Center at Cornell University this has been the rainiest on record!) and to large events like the Grassroots festival. However, due to overtime and efforts like the aforementioned sidewalks decision, the contractors have made up for lost time. The project still looks to be completed somewhere between October 22nd 2006 and October 31st 2006.

MSP FAQ

That's "Main Street Project Frequently Asked Questions" for anyone wondering what that string of acronyms above means. Here are all the questions and answers that appeared on our FAQ sheet hitting Main Street today. Please note, that this is not an exact reproduction of the FAQ sheet as it appears in print form, but does contain the exact same text. Enjoy!

1) Will the trees removed from Main Street be replanted?

Yes! All the trees removed from Main Street as a part of construction will be replanted with new well-established street trees. The new species include Japanese Elms, Black Gums, Crabapples, and Hedge Maples to name a few.

2) How far are the sidewalks going during this phase of the project?

New/refurbished sidewalk will run from the Post Office all the way to the Fairgrounds on the south side of Main St and from Ron Don’s to the Masonic Temple on the north side of Main St.

3) What will happen to the section of Old Main Street between the traffic island and Ron Don’s?

It will remain open to traffic requiring a slight right turn to enter

4) Where are the bricks going to be placed?

Both engraved and blank bricks will be installed in arch-shaped patches within the new concrete sidewalks. Brick patches will be inserted in various locations from Farrell’s Car Wash to the Masonic Temple.

5) Where will the streetlights go?

The bases and wiring for 42 streetlights are going in as a part of this phase of construction. The streetlight bases are concentrated within the Village downtown, running from the Post Office to the library. Additional fundraising will be required to purchase and install the lights.

6) What is happening by the bank?

Work in front of the bank involves moving the Union Street stop sign closer to Main Street for higher visibility and moving the curb locations further out into the street to improve pedestrian access and create a tree-lined community plaza with benches.

7) What is happening to parking along Main Street?

When completed, our downtown will have lost very few parking spaces with the biggest change involving removing the three parking spaces on the island by Ron Don’s.

8) When will construction end?

Current plans require Economy Paving to finish all major construction by October 31^st 2006. Some tree planting and landscaping will remain to be completed in the Spring of 2007.

The first signs...

Crews from Economy Paving's sidewalk sub-contractor, A & K Slipform, began to pour new sidewalks on Main Street today! Crews poured concrete into the lengths of sidewalk on the far end of east Main Street (by the school), helping bring that section of Main Street to final completion.

At the other end of Main Street, sidewalk teams poured strips of sidewalk around the Big M parking lot as well as the new pedestrian access by the Post Office. Workers from Geneva Curb, the curbing subcontractor, also continued their respective work by laying down new curb past Farrell's Car Wash. That thin green cord staked along the north side of West Main street is the marker for the new curbs that Geneva Curbing plans to install throughout the week.

Electrical sub-contractors also continue to install the 42 bases for the future streetlights. The light bases are those large concrete cylinders planted along the sidewalks on Main Street. The Main Street Project is currently beginning to develop fundraising plan for the lightpoles to go in those bases.

If the rest of the week has nice weather like today then expect to see more new additions to Main Street later in the week!

Office Hours Tomorrow

The MSP office will not be open tomorrow, Friday September 15th 2006! I will be in Ithaca all morning presenting the MSP to a grant class at Ithaca College in hopes of having a student team write a grant for future MSP operations! Make sure to check out the blog for more information on that!

Feel free to leave voicemails on our phone, messages with the Village Clerk at the Village Office, or send the project an e-mail. The MSP will respond to you by Friday evening.

The office will be open during its regular hours (Tuesdays/Thursdays 8am-4pm and Friday 8am-12noon) starting next week. Thank you.

FAQ coming soon

In order to better and quickly answer many of the most common questions to come to the MSP, the project is developing a FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) sheet for distribution. Look for this FAQ on our website, this very blog, and as a poster and/or flier around town sometime soon! If you belong to our e-newsletter then a copy will be sent to you as soon as a a final draft is produced. That is the kind of great perks you can expect when you belong to the MSP e-mail newsletter! Want to join? Of course you do! Send an e-mail to tburgmainst@fltg.net expressing your interest. Hope to hear from you soon!

Change to Curbing Schedule

Members of the subcontractor installing new gas main pipes for NYSEG have requested that the curbing teams from Geneva Curb delay the start time for curb installation. The gas main teams believe that the gas main needs an additional 200 ft of new pipe to replace the aging main running along the south side of Main Street to Elm Street. The curbing teams only want to begin their work after all the gas main have come in (as to avoid having to dig up he brand new curbs!) and have decied to honor the gas main team's request. Hence, Geneva Curb will not begin installaing new curb tomorrow as reported in our earlier blog post today (Tuesday September 12th 2006). It now appears that new curbs will begin to go down on the north side of West Main Street (by the Post Office) either on Thursday September 14th 2006 or Friday September 15th 2006. While this dealy does slow down the installation of the curb it does not represent a major setback to the project.

Sidewalk Work Continues

Economy Paving and its various sub-contractors were able to provide plenty of information and estimates today for the Village/MSP. I have listed them below. Since these updates concern different sections of Main Street I decided to block of each of the paragraphs and label them in different colored fonts. Hope this makes them easier to read.

According to the latest estimates from Economy Paving, sidewalk crews will begin to rip up the remaining sidewalk on the north side of East Main Street (running from the Simply Red Village Bistro to the edge of the Masonic Temple) either tomorrow (September 13th 2006) or Thursday September 14th 2006. The crews will fill this area with the gravel surface by the other stores in that block. If the weather holds out then utility teams can then take advantage of these ripped up sidewalks to install both the electrical and gas lines. The utility work on that side of the street will run from the Masonic Temple all the way to Ron Don's.

Other members of the sidewalk crew hope to finish the remaining patches of sidewalk on East Main Street (by the trimmed Red Bud Tree and at the Main St./Truman St. intersection) starting Thursday September 14th 2006. If these crews are able to form and pour the sidewalks on that day then all the sidewalk on the far end of East Main Street will be done!

Curbing sub-contractors also plan to come into the Village tomorrow. Curbing crews will begin their work on the south side of West Main Street (by the Post Office) and run into the Village's downtown. The curbing subcontractor for the project (Geneva Curb) believes it can have all the curbs on that side of the street done within two days of their start time.

The MSP understand that it looks like the project keeps removing trees from Main Street, but all those trees will be replanted! Crews removed the two trees from in front of the Napa auto parts store, which leaves only the pair of small shrubs in front of the Masonic Temple to be removed. Once again, all the trees removed by the project will be replanted and anyone interested can come to the Village/MSP Office and take a look at the plans. As mentioned in our previous blog posts concerning the street trees, by project's end there will be 54 new trees on Main Street. The new street trees represent a mix of species but include Japanese Elms (Ulmus japonica), Swamp White Oaks (Quercus bicolor), Crabapples, Red Maples (Acer rubrum), Black Gum (Nyssa sylvatica), and Hedge Maples (Acer campestre) trees. All the tree plantings have either an 80mm or 90mm caliper reading at chest height meaning that the trees are about 3 to 3.5 inches thick.

That is all for now. Keep turning to the blog for more information!

More on Locust Trees

To follow up on the original post concerning the removal of the Locust trees on East Main Street, the overall streetscape plans for the project call for the removal/transplant of ten trees. Due to some last minute alterations to the plans the remaining trees to be moved/removed have yet to be decided. The MSP hopes to transplant or circumvent these trees, primarily concentrated around the Village's Post Office building. As more details become available we will post them to the blog.

According to the streetscape plans, all trees removed due to construction will be replanted. The plans also included locations for new street trees, so that by the end of the project close to 50 new trees will be on Main Street.

The construction plans are available in the Village and MSP offices for anyone to view. Please make sure to call ahead so that we can have someone there to help translate the plans for you, if you need such clarification.

These are the times...

The MSP realizes that with both sides of Main Street opened up and crews working at a frenzied pace right in the Village's downtown that these are the most pressing times for the residents of Main Street and the Village as a whole. In order to address these concerns please make sure to consider this:

1) Thank You!
Economy Paving and the MSP want to thank everyone in the Village for their great patience with the project. Both water main superintendent Stu Doty and sidewalk superintendent John Jenison have mentioned how the appreciate the citizenry's understanding and ability to communicate their concerns effectively and calmly.

2) Effects
Almost every home/business on Main Street will be affected by the construction at some point in the project. Some already have and some have seen plenty of crews right in front of their windows. The contractors cannot do much to mitigate the fact that they will be in front of a business/home at some point, but can do something to avoid a location at a time that is of particular importance to them. For example, some of the business owners along Main Street have requested that crews not be in front of their business when they receive deliveries or during their busiest times of day. Economy Paving is happy to accomodate these requests and has done so already. Feel free to contact the project with any information pertinent to such a request.

3) Communication
Economy Paving and all the subcontractors on the job have been instructed in both writing and orally that they must contact a property owner before doing any work that might encroach on that owner's property. There are no exceptions to this request. If you are a property owner along Main Street and feel that your property was affected by construction and were not given enough warning then please contact the MSP office immediately!
While the MSP office now has official office hours (Tuesdays and Thursday from 8am to 4pm and Fridays from 8am-12noon) the office e-mail/voicemail systems are always ready to receive messages. You can leave questions /comments with the Village clerk's office as well. The MSP Communication Pathways are always open and the volunteers/staff make it a priority to respond as promptly as possible.

Hope this information helps!

Locust Trees on Main Street

Pedestrians and communters along Main Street have probably noticed the major changes to the block of stores (S & S Videos, Simply Red, Little Venice, etc) along the the north side of Main Street. Tree service crews, under the direction of NYSEG, came in and cut away all the Locust trees in front of that block. The trees had to be removed in order to do any of the planned sidewalk and utility work in that area. Economy Paving's sidewalk crews will remove the stumps and will replant trees in the same spots once their work is complete. According to the landscape plans the new trees will be Japanese Elms (Ulmus japonica), an elm species resistant to both Dutch Elm Disease and the elm leaf bettle. Planting these elms is both an effort to replace the locust trees lost and to bring back the elm trees reported to historically resided on Main Street before the arrrival of Dutch Elm Disease.

MSP Office Hours

The MSP office now has official office hours. The office hours will run thoughout the lenght of the project and are:

Tuesdays: 8am-4pm
Thursday: 8am-4pm
Fridays: 8am-12noon

Please note that this schedule does not mean that the MSP is unavailable at all other times. The hours just mean that someone from the MSP is guaranteed to be there at those times and that these are the best times for walk-ins. Feel free to call/e-mail the project anytime as the staff makes sure to check on these several times a day.

NYSEG Begins Work

As scheduled, crews from the New York State Electrical and Gas (NYSEG) began their work today (September 5th 2006). NYSEG crews will work at refurbishing/re-installing utility lines underneath Main Street. NYSEG plans to work at a quick pace and predicts that their brief, but important, part of the project will be done by the end of the week (September 8th 2006). Check back again on that date for the final word on their phase of the project.

Water Main Work Completed!

By the end of the work day today (September 1st 2006) all work on water main will be completed! Crews are currently filling in the last pits and double checking that everything is in working order. All buidlings that get municipal water in the Village now enjoy water from the brand new water main. Economy Paving wants to thank the residents of Trumansburg for their patience and understanding with this phase of construction. The water main work represented the deepest digs and greatest impact to the public, but Economy appreciated everyone's resolve. The MSP also wants to thank the water main crews for their hard work particularly water main superintendent Stu Doty on what looks to be his last construction job.

The end of water main work does not mean the end of overall construction. Sidewalk crews can now increase their pace and work within the downtown area. Today sidewalk crews began to open up space in front of the Big M, Family Dollar, and Movie Gallery stores in order to create the gravel pathway that will ultimately become new sidewalk.