New Bureau of Service facility on schedule

PHOTOGRAPHER: Kathleen Moore

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Despite the endless rain, the huge Bureau of Service construction project is now slightly ahead of schedule.

Workers have erected several buildings at once — a garage, an office and a large salt shed — and are on schedule to finish the shed by winter and the other buildings by spring.

Then they will demolish the old brick BOS buildings across the street on Foster Avenue, including one that is so unsound that the upper floor had to be closed off years ago. The windows in that building were boarded over after nearly every pane was broken by passersby armed with stones and BB guns.

Employees can’t wait to move out next March.

“We’re excited to get a flat floor,” said master mechanic Michael Maynard.

Unlike the boarded-up building that Maynard works in now, the new buildings will have plenty of light and enough space that he can bring vehicles indoors to work on them in bad weather.

“We need space for truck repairs,” he said. “We’ll have room so we won’t bump into each other.”

The buildings will also be sized for modern equipment. City workers damaged the previous salt shed’s roof because it was so much lower than their trucks.

All that will come to an end next March.

Project supervisor Mitchell Sisson of Jersen Construction Group said the project is going much better than expected.

“It was expected not to be on track, I guess, but we’re right on schedule — if anything, a little ahead of schedule,” he said. “The rain, everybody worked through it. It was wet and muddy, but there was only one day we had to leave early.”

Masonry is projected to start by mid-September instead of early October, and if that goes on as scheduled, Sisson expects no winter weather delays.

“It’s going to be good. Seeing as we got a good jump on it now, the masons will be starting here in two weeks,” he said. “We’ll be turning it over [to the city] at the end of March.”

The entire project is budgeted to cost $20.3 million and allow the consolidation of every BOS department into one location. Those services include parks, water, sewer, garbage collection, plowing, vehicle maintenance and vehicle fueling.