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Workers prepare for the reopening of Dey Street to vehicle traffic
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It’s been just over three years since Dey Street began the long transition of becoming a street with a tunnel below.
But on Monday, November 24th, the brand-new roadway will return to the downtown street grid, while also serving as the roof of a pedestrian concourse that will link two of the city’s biggest transit hubs.
Shovels first broke ground on the Dey Street Concourse on October 3rd, 2005. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) coordinated the closure with the city Department of Transportation and Century 21, to accommodate the retailer’s frequent deliveries, and other local businesses.
Over the next three years, MTA engineers and crews ripped up the pavement and began carving out the 400-foot-long tunnel as deep down as 50 feet. The web of underground utilities often called for hand-digging, with crews working long hours through summer heat waves and winter freezes.
For the passage to span from the Fulton Street Transit Center on Broadway all the way into the World Trade Center (WTC) Transportation Hub, the excavation extended below the R/W Cortlandt Street station -- work that called for major logistics and schedule coordination with the Port Authority’s neighboring east bathtub project. The reopened street this week allowed the Port Authority to occupy a third lane of Church Street to expedite WTC mass excavation.
Along with providing another westbound traffic route from Broadway, the restored Dey Street provides curb space for deliveries, as well as a new Millennium Hotel taxi stand on the north curb. Pedestrians already have flooded the street’s new sidewalks since they opened earlier this month.
Meanwhile, the R/W Cortlandt station, which closed in 2005, is getting rebuilt stairways on Church Street. MTA officials told Community Board 1 last month that they are determining when to reopen either or both of the station’s platforms. A decision is expected soon.
MTA crews will soon award the contracts to underpin the Corbin Building and complete the Transit Center’s foundations in anticipation of a revised main-building design.
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