Inside Third & Bond: Week 58

This week the Hudson & Co. bloggers are all about the mini piles…

A neighbor called us last week, worried that the financial sector’s implosion had caused us to shut down the site. She’s a gem of a neighbor; she hates the construction noise but prefers the noise of progress to an empty lot. We assured her: we are full steam ahead with the project and other than wondering what the buying climate will be like when we are ready to start selling, we are relatively unaffected at Third + Bond. Our bank, Wachovia, is sending us our requisitioned funds without so much as a hiccup, all the while working out their deal with Wells Fargo. News of the construction industry slowing is not all bad as we expect material prices to drop and we still have buy-outs for items such as kitchen cabinetry and hardware to go.

So what is happening at the site right now? Find out below…

We are installing mini piles this week for underpinning our neighbor on Third Street and will follow soon with the mini piles for our neighbor on Bond Street. In the first photo, the machine shown is installing mini piles. In both pictures, the numbering indicates the sections that are part of each sequence of underpinning. (For more on underpinning see our Week 28 posting.) In the second photo, you can also see a neighboring construction project rising just to the other side of the building that we are underpinning.

The mini piles go in just about like a knife in butter. Unlike the banging of timber piles, mini piles are screwed in. They are much smaller in diameter than timber piles just under 9 compared to a minimum of 12. The installation of mini piles is step 3 in the 8-step underpinning sequence. The later steps include reinforcement between the existing building’s foundation and the mini pile with rebar, concrete, and grout. Steps 1-2 prep the site as a whole and then 3-8 are repeated for each section before moving onto the next section. Rinse, lather, repeat.

It took us longer than we expected to start underpinning because the Department of Buildings (DOB) is changing the way it does business. Last year a new division, the Excavation Unit was created which seemed mostly to track which sites were doing excavation and when. We followed the same old rules had an engineer design plans and got those plans permitted, and alerted the Excavation Unit before we started excavation. Then, months later a DOB inspector stopped by and although we hadn’t yet started the underpinning work, he asked that we submit our permitted plans to the Excavation Unit for further review. While it still took us quite a bit of time to have a sit down review with the Unit, we were heartened to discover that the engineers we were assigned to work with were knowledgeable, reasonable, and professional. And since hearing about the number of other projects City-wide put on hold while DOB’s Excavation Unit takes a second look, we’ve decided this is probably a change that is here to stay. If there’s a lesson learned here it is that getting a permit from one part of DOB doesn’t mean you are good to start the work there are more constituencies than before. Fortunately, those constituencies are ready and willing to provide constructive (!) commentary for everyone’s benefit. It’s kind of like the new socialism in banking the government is stepping in to make sure we can all support our risks. Fortunately, we don’t (yet) have to provide ownership stakes in exchange for this support.

Inside Third & Bond: Week 57 [Brownstoner]
Inside Third & Bond: Week 56 [Brownstoner]
Inside Third & Bond: Week 55 [Brownstoner]
Inside Third & Bond: Week 54 [Brownstoner]
Inside Third & Bond: Week 53 [Brownstoner]

From our lawyers: This is not an offering. No offering can be made until an offering plan is filed with the Department of Law of the State of New York.”