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Crews are now performing final utility and repaving work on Dey Street
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With final designs for the main building still on the drawing board, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) has pressed on with other construction elements of the Fulton Street Transit Center. Community Board 1 (CB1) heard the latest update on October 6th, when Director of Special Project Development and Planning William Wheeler reviewed the latest project milestones and future plans.
Wheeler began at Dey Street, where the underground concourse now stands as a completed concrete tunnel with only interior finishing work remaining. That structure is the east-west pedestrian link between the Transit Center’s main building on Broadway, the R/W Cortlandt Street station at Church, and the Port Authority’s WTC Transportation Hub. To make those underground connections, Wheeler explained that the concourse’s extensions below the R/W and 4/5 subway boxes also are structurally complete.
Crews are now performing final utility and repaving work on Dey Street, which is scheduled to reopen to traffic by Thanksgiving, three years since it closed. Beside it, excavation of the new headhouse is complete at Dey and Broadway, with crews preparing for new construction.
At the R/W Cortlandt station, Wheeler says crews are finishing the new stairways on Church Street, as New York City Transit planners determine whether or not to reopen the north- and southbound train platforms. A decision likely will come in winter 2009.
While the MTA does not yet have a final design for the main Transit Center building at Broadway and Fulton, crews are actively working on its foundation. In addition to installing secant piles around its perimeter, they are starting to build the sub-grade platform that will serve as the lower floor of the “mixing bowl” -- the term Wheeler used for the building’s central space. And as originally planned, the new building will still house 24,000 square feet of retail, use “air tempering” fans to help cool the station, and likely use natural light.
Wheeler added that the MTA is looking at many options for the redesigned main building, but that the agency plans to “get as close as possible to the [design] that was originally committed.”
Of the multiple construction contracts issued for the Fulton Transit Center project, only four major contracts remain. Next are the two separate contracts to complete the 4/5 platform improvements and rebuild the A/C platform access points -- both to be awarded in early 2009. The final two contracts will follow to renovate the Corbin Building and erect the main building.
In his presentation, Wheeler also reported that the new South Ferry station is on track for a late-December 2008 opening. The terminal and its three new entrance structures are now complete; tracks, elevators and escalators are installed; and train signals are being tested. The station also will feature new artwork that Wheeler said will remain under wraps until the ribbon cutting.
Landscaping above the South Ferry station at Peter Minuit Plaza will be done in spring 2009 in coordination with both the city Parks Department and Department of Transportation, which will help create the new bus loop around the plaza.
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