2018 Update #54
New Public Art Downtown; Working Around the Rain
While the construction crew busied themselves with downtown paving repairs on the one day this week that rain didn’t fall, an eye-catching new design (reminiscent, perhaps, of traditional embroidery?) brought a cheery message to the public art surrounding the Triangle Park construction.
The new work was created by Nick Misani, a freelance designer and letterer whose career has taken him from his native Milan to Japan and New York City and now to Brandon. Misani has had a noteworthy career to date, designing for, among others, Penguin Random House and Apple. You can read more about him here.
Kathy Reynolds, Jane Schoenfeld, Ann Crumb, Carolyn Perine, and Nancy Malcolm assisted with installation of the piece.
The downtown public art project is organized by our Neighbors Together community action group with funding provided by the Vermont Agency of Transportation and creative direction by Town Hall Theater’s Artistic Director Doug Anderson.
Promoting Your Community Event
Last week I mentioned that the Better Middlebury Partnership had just released an all-new version of its Experience Middlebury website, a digital platform dedicated to “celebrating the products and experiences that make our community special.”
The BMP is committed to maintaining a current calendar of community events and has made it easy for organizations to submit their events to the new website’s community calendar. You can add your event to the calendar here.
As a reminder, the new site is part of an integrated effort to drive a Shop, Eat, and Drink Local Campaign developed by Neighbors Together in collaboration with the BMP and the Town of Middlebury during the Rail & Bridge Project.
Merchants Row & Main Street Road Work Done
Thanks to those whose travels took them downtown on Tuesday for your patience as Kubricky paved the utility trench excavated last week on Merchants Row in the morning, reopened that roadway, and then repaired the Main Street temporary bridge in the afternoon. I bet I’m not alone in enjoying not having to maneuver around that bump in the southbound lane.
Your Weekly Construction Update
Progress in drilling the tunnel that will connect the Launch Pit to Receiving Pit 3 slowed this week as the Tunnel Boring Machine ran into seams of water running through the bedrock alongside the rail line in the Marble Works. As the water mixes with the crushed rock (throw in some rain), it’s become a gray soupy mess down in the Launch Pit this week.
The ECI team began installing the carrier pipe that will sit inside the steel casing of each tunnel within the drainage system. The photo below shows a 20-foot section sitting outside the Outfall ready for installation.
Several folks have recently asked me how the new drainage system will work once it becomes operational. In turn, I’ve asked the engineering design team at VHB to put together a diagram and narrative to explain this.
Kubricky began excavating a second utility trench behind the National Bank of Middlebury on Wednesday. As I mentioned last week, the electric and telecom lines in the National Bank of Middlebury’s parking lot and in Printer’s Alley need to be placed underground to free space for cranes to operate safely in 2020. This will make for a significant improvement in the entrance to the Marble Works.
The photo below shows conduits being laid in the trench. They will be encased in concrete before the trench is backfilled and paved. This work will continue into early next week.
There’s quite a bit of rain in the forecast, but next week Kubricky expects to pave the pathway that connects the Marble Works to the pedestrian bridge crossing Otter Creek near Storm Café. While it’s being repaved, the path will be temporarily closed for about half a day. (The path was widened and covered with stone to facilitate movement of construction equipment down along the Creek to the Outfall.)
That’s all for today. See you downtown.
Please keep your comments and questions coming. Send me an email at jgish@townofmiddlebury.org and I’ll try to cover it in my next update.