Church Demo Soon?

I have been speaking with the foreman. They sidewalks are not closed or rerouted. The demolition will begin in the next week, and new construction soon after. I guess that going from residential to commercial sped up the building process quite a bit.

Tomorrow (Monday), they will be removing the delicate stained-glass windows that the church hopes to integrate into the new building. The rest of the interior has been gutted.

They are expecting construction to take about 2 years — so the 10 parking spaces on 10th street are history for a while — and more on G Street will also be affected.

10th Street has been reduced to 1 traffic lane, 1 bike lane and 1 parking lane. The traffic there will be nuts during rush hour — I wonder if the tourist buses will be rerouted.

Great. Now, when are they going to finish the work across the street in front of West Elm?

Why isn’t CVS becoming a construction site? They took away my CVS!! and now it’s just another empty retail space on 7th Street. Wake Asylum, the Chinese restauant Sam Fong and CVS, more vacant spaces just what 7th street needs. The longer it takes to start construction the longer for it is to open -at this point 2011?
Anybody know what the hold-up is? Problems with permits? money? Thanks!

The sidewalk in front of West Elm will never be finished. They are building missile silos under the sidewalk. Hehe. But seriously, I have spoken to people at Douglas and the BID — no one knows (or is saying) what that nightmare is all about.

#3: Last week, workers took down the vertical CVS sign that was on the corner of the historic building. Since that corner building is only going to have its interior renovated, it is not likely to become a bona fide construction site. The former Kam Fong, Lei Garden, and China Doll locations will be the construction sites.

I guess nothing we can do about it, but I am really worried about this development. I just don’t have a good feeling, I think the project has bad karma – i am envisioning a worst-case scenario of developers failing to find tenants, cutting corners on construction, etc and this being an active construction site for 4 or 5 years with the developer squableing with contractors, etc.

In the long run all I am sure will be fine since its a valuable piece of land, just worried about the short to medium term.

I hope that I am proved wrong.

#6 – maybe karma will come back to them for being such a horrible neighbor in the past.

Now that the church is closed, I can actually walk down G street without being harassed or assaulted by the soup kitchen clients.

I’m sorry, but the concept of soup kitchens is about as antiquated as dense urban public housing.

The longer the construction takes, the longer we have to wait for the soup kitchen crowd to return.