Results tagged “construction”

Several hundred office workers in the vicinity of the 500 block of D Street NW got to go home early today after a construction crew ruptured a gas line in the area this afternoon. Fire crews responded to a call of a large gas leak at about 2 p.m., and several buildings in the area of 6th, 7th & D Streets and Indiana Ave. NW were evacuated as a precaution, according to D.C. Fire/EMS spokesperson Pete Piringer. Some of those streets were also closed to traffic while the Washington Gas Co. worked to repair the leak. Most of the evacuated buildings were cleared for re-entry by about 3:30 p.m., but some streets remained closed for the rush hour.

       

Chinatown's famed Friendship Arch got a bit of a sprucing up this summer, and today city officials gathered to formally reintroduce the landmark.

The District Department of Transportation is moving ahead with the installation of streetcar slabs and tracks along H Street NE, despite the fact that the streetcars themselves still have several planning hurdles to overcome before they'll be cleared to start running. But the laying of tracks will cause two intersections on H Street to be temporarily closed this week.

A construction worker fell down a shaft in a building under construction near the intersection of 1st and K Streets NE around 9 a.m. this morning. D.C. Fire/EMS responded to a call of a worker who had fallen at 90 K Street NE. The man fell about 20 feet, according to fire department spokesperson Pete Piringer. A crane is in use at the scene to help remove the injured worker.

Via the Hill's Briefing Room blog, it looks like the Architect of the Capitol is at last set to begin renovations on the infamous tunnel that runs between the U.S. Capitol complex and the Capitol Power Plant. The work, which involves digging a big pit to access the tunnel about a block away from the Capitol South Metro station, will cause traffic around the intersection of North Carolina Avenue and First Street SE will be detoured. You may recall that the tunnel, long in a state of crumbling disrepair, has been the subject of controversy for several years, after it was revealed in 2006 that a 10-man crew working inside it had been exposed to extremely high levels of asbestos.

You've probably noticed the ongoing construction surrounding the Chinatown Archway at H and 7 Streets NW. The Archway itself has been covered up for several weeks, and the renovation work is expected to wrap up before the end of August. In order to complete the construction, DDOT plans to close H Street entirely between 6th and 7th Streets NW overnight tonight. The 600 block of H Street will be closed from midnight until to approximately 5 a.m. on Tuesday morning while crews move large equipment needed for the renovations into place. Drivers are instructed to follow posted signs, and use F Street or I Street to detour around the area.

Renovations at the Georgetown Neighborhood Library branch are now underway, as We Love D.C. noted yesterday, so we checked in with folks at the D.C. Public Library to see how things are coming along.

       

Eastern Market is officially set to reopen to the public on June 26, a little over two years after it was gutted by a devastating fire. Lucky dog Flickr contributor erin_m, aka local photog Erin McCann, who has been documenting the market's progress since the fire, managed to get a look inside the building on Monday night as crews work to put the finishing touches in before next Friday. She's posted her entire photo set here. Erin writes:

A very, very nice security guard gave me a tour of the rebuilt Eastern Market tonight.

Continue reading "Sneak Peek at Eastern Market Renovations"

Mark your calendars, Washington. Eastern Market's official reopening has been set for June 26, as D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty announced yesterday. It's been a little over two years since the historic building was ravaged by fire. A temporary structure was eventually built to house the market's vendors while a $22 million renovation project began on the building itself.

The massive two-year-long 14th Street bridge construction project was scheduled to begin on Monday, but the start of work has been postponed until Tuesday, May 26, the day after Memorial Day, WTOP reports. The change in plan is due to a need to coordinate traffic control with the National Park Service, according to DDOT.

If you drive over the Chain Bridge on a regular basis, take note that delays are headed your way.

Martin already mentioned the city's announcement that major work on the 14th Street bridges will commence this month and continue on for two years, but here are some of the finer details, released by DDOT and the mayor's office yesterday:

The Examiner reports that the "Social" Safeway, located at 1855 Wisconsin Ave NW, will close on Sunday for extensive renovations. While residents in this toney Northwest D.C. neighborhood still have plenty of other grocery shopping options (there's a Whole Foods up the road in Glover Park, and a Giant a little north of there), Safeway is also offering folks who live in ZIP codes surrounding the store free delivery with online orders. There are also plans for a temporary pharmacy to open across from the construction site. DCmud has more on the renovations themselves, which include demolishing the existing store and replacing it with an entirely new facility that will more closely resemble the "Sexy" Safeway in the CityVista building near Mt. Vernon Square. The "Social" Safeway is slated for a reopening in March of 2010.

Local service non-profit Bread for the City broke ground this morning on construction of a greatly expanded facility next to its current 7th Street NW location. The organization provides needy D.C. residents with food and clothing assistance, medical care, and legal and social services.

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WJLA says there is a scary cloud of noxious dust coming from a construction site at 17th and H Streets NW. We confess we haven't noticed such a cloud, but at least a few workers in the area are complaining of symptoms like burning eyes and difficulty breathing, according the report. Have any of you noticed this?

Just how many people will descend on our fair city for the inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States? That's the question on everyone's mind this week, and much like all other matters inaugural right now, no one has any friggin' clue what the answer is.

If you work anywhere near the intersection of Connecticut Ave. and K Street NW, you've been following the spectacular demolition of the two buildings formerly located at 1701 and 1725 K Street NW earlier this year. Now that the corner is a big, gaping hole in a prime downtown location, we've been eagerly awaiting the word on when construction would begin on the new 12-story office complex that is planned to replace it. But this morning, the Post broke some bad news: the parcel's developer wants to turn the whole thing into a parking lot, at least for a year or two.

The developer demolished two office buildings at the intersection's northwest corner this year after winning D.C. approval to replace them with a 12-story office complex designed by the architecture firm founded by I.M. Pei.

Continue reading "Valuable K Street Land to Become Parking Lot? Ugh."

To follow up with those of you who reacted strongly to our photo gallery yesterday of the abandoned St. Elizabeths West Campus and the plans that are in the works to relocate the Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Coast Guard there, Mayor Adrian Fenty and Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton held an impromptu press conference this morning to unveil the city's plans for its share of the nearly 200 acres of land in Southeast Washington, D.C. Wire reports.

                     

While the East Campus of St. Elizabeths hospital is owned by the District and still in use as a mental health facility, the West Campus, built by Congress in 1852 (originally under the name Government Hospital for the Insane), was by and large abandoned by 2002. It's still under the control of the U.S. General Services Administration, but few people these days get a chance to explore the abandoned 176 acre hospital grounds, which through time served as mental health facilities for the Army, Navy, and District of Columbia, provided a hospital for Civil War soldiers, and at one point housed the likes of Garfield assassin Charles Guiteau and writer Ezra Pound.

   

Arlington institution Dr. Dremo's closed its doors and auctioned off everything that wasn't nailed down back in January, but the building and its neighbors (the old Taco Bell, etc.) have stood empty since then, awaiting demolition to make way for a new condo development. Well George Whelan sent in these photos showing that demolition has finally begun. Most of the surrounding buildings are being taken down today, and one construction worker said he had been told they'd do the actual Dremo's building sometime next week. So, Dremo's fans, stroll by this week to take one long, last look.

Flickr user erin_m noticed the new fencing and signs up around the U.S. Capitol, 118 days before the 2009 inauguration. Indeed, Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.) is scheduled to ceremoniously hammer the first stake into the inaugural platform today, the first step in a four-month construction project. Feinstein heads the Senate's inaugural panel.

For those of you headed out of town for the weekend, take note if you plan to drive out the city over the Francis Case Memorial Bridge after 9 p.m. tonight. Just got this from DDOT:

The District Department of Transportation (DDOT) is scheduled to install a new overhead sign on Interstate 395, at the Francis Case Memorial Bridge, on Friday, September 19, 2008. All of the work will be conducted overnight, between 9pm and 4am, and will require the closing of the northbound lanes. There may also be limited lane closures in the southbound lanes to ensure the safety of motorists and workers.

Continue reading "Lane Closures on Francis Case Memorial Bridge Overnight"

If you ran in to a lot of backed up traffic downtown early this morning, the Post explains why: D.C. firefighters rescued a construction worker on the ninth floor of an 11-story building at 1999 K Street NW. The worker fractured his right ankle after a fall at about 7:30 a.m., and because the building does not have working elevators, fire crews had to use a construction crane to get the man down to the street and into an ambulance. Police closed 20th Street between K and L streets for about an hour during the rescue operation.

WTOP is reporting that emergency crane inspections are already underway in the District after a deadly crane collapse in New York City this morning.

Last fall we reported that builders in the District would be required to construct covered pedestrian walkways beginning in October. Since then, we've definitely seen a few of the new, safer passages around town, but we've also run into more than a handful of others, such as the one pictured above at 11th and K Streets NW, that still force pedestrians to cross the street to use a proper sidewalk (or, as is often the case, simply put them in harms way when they end up walking alongside a construction fence in a lane of traffic, as is the case in this photo).

Major roadwork is scheduled on the Outer Loop starting Friday night and lasting until Sunday afternoon, which will reduce traffic to one lane in preparation for next week's shift to moving traffic onto the second span of the Wilson Bridge.

It was one year ago today that District residents awoke to the sad news that a fire had torn through Eastern Market's South Hall, displacing the many food vendors who called the historic building home and shuttering a favorite weekend destination. And though the city reacted quickly and constructed the East Hall, a temporary structure across the street, progress on the $20 million renovation of the South Hall has proceeded slowly.

In the department of bad timing, at the end of last week the Department of Parks and Recreation sent around a press release notifying the community that the play courts, plaza, and playground at the Stead Recreation Center at 1625 P Street NW will temporarily close beginning April 30, 2008.

Not a lot of details on this just yet, but Assistant Police Chief Diane Groomes just sent around an email alerting neighborhood lists that T Street NW is closed to traffic at and around 14th Street due to a construction worker having fallen off the roof of a building he was working on. Units from the MPD are already on the scene.