Author Topic: The makeover of the E municipal parking lot  (Read 11262 times)

Offline BLeafe

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The makeover of the E municipal parking lot
« on: April 18, 2021, 05:05:53 PM »
NOTE: Title has been changed.

1-16. Last Thursday, I saw someone in the E lot behind my building surveying the entire lot and spray-marking everywhere, including Ward and State streets. It looked serious. "Oh no - they're gonna put up a twin 389 Main right behind the original in the E lot (and 20' from my living room window)!"

The next day, a couple of Bobcats were parked in the lot, ready to start digging it up.

Time to check in with The Editor: "What's going on?"

The reply: "Refresh: New curbs, paving, drainage, pay station. (No more meters)."

Phew!

By the end of the day, 3 Bobcats and one police electronic sign were tucked into the SW corner of the lot.

17, 18. Yesterday, another piece of equipment was added.

19,20. I decided to go outside and see if the sign was functioning yet. It was, telling everyone that the lot will be closed on the 20th and that all cars must be removed. I think a lot of people will either not see that sign or read it incorrectly, so their defense might be, "But your Honor - the sign said 'TUSDAY'.........I thought it was missing two letters and meant to say 'THURSDAY'."

ALL PICTURES AND TEXT IN THIS THREAD ARE COPYRIGHT BOB LEAFE

Click horizontals and 3-photo sign stitch to enlarge.


« Last Edit: July 11, 2021, 05:39:00 PM by BLeafe »


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Offline BLeafe

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Re: The makeover of the E municipal parking lot Day 1 - 4-20-21
« Reply #1 on: April 24, 2021, 11:40:03 AM »
1. Two days before TUSDAY, I thought I should take a couple of "before " shots. so I walked across State St, turned around and took the E lot's final portrait stitch, just in case this turned into a photo project.

2. I also took one last shot of the main part of the lot from my apartment.

3. As I started taking a LOT of pictures of the actual work two days later, I realized that I DO have another start-to-finish project right in front of me, so I changed the post's title to make it more accurate. The rest of the pictures in this post are from Day 1 (4-20-21). The first thing they started on at 7am was the western end of the center island, nearest to me (there will be no sleeping late on weekdays for a while).

4. Save for the parking lot light pole, the takedown of Center Island progressed to State St.

5. More blueprints and white spray

6. Some of the supplies from a D. S. Meyer Enterprises truck (DSM is doing the makeover)

7. The center island has become a broken concrete hill.

8. All the island pieces are pushed together to be carted away later.

9. The larger pieces of the island closest to Ward St get broken up. Not a bad shot for 7 floors up (he says modestly, as he hurts his arm from patting himself on the back).

10. First look at the demolished islands

11. Looks like fun in the playground

12. The Ward-side island is cleared of concrete pieces.

13. This is how these items were trucked and rather unceremoniously dumped.

14. More added dirt piles from the Ward-side island

15. Start with a stitch and finish with a stitch. Minus my, uh......adjustments, this is how things looked at the end of Day 1. Late additions: some unusual carve-outs at the near ends of the two former islands and breakup of part of the third island (on the far right).

Click to enlarge - especially the stitches.


« Last Edit: April 24, 2021, 01:42:32 PM by BLeafe »
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Offline BLeafe

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Re: The makeover of the E municipal parking lot Day 2 - 4-21-21
« Reply #2 on: April 25, 2021, 05:01:59 PM »
I'm posting these in the order I shot them.

1. Not sure what these co-workers are doing at 7:03am.

2. Truck took a perfect dump at 7:10am.

3,4. The carve-outs get deeper.

5,6. The corners are becoming rounded.

7. Balancing act

8. The center island pole and lights came crashing down. I didn't see it nor did I hear it, but the smashed pieces tell the story.

9. Double dump

10,11. The center island pipes that I think contain the electrical wiring get covered up.

12. The Ward-side island - getting dug out - awaits the to-be-connected electrical pipe pieces near the top of the pic. The pipes will only reach as far as the back end of that white car and then take a sharp left in front of that small curb you see by the car. That curb is the dividing line between the parking spaces of the business that's on the corner of State and Ward and the Ward Street side of the E lot. Various flavors of rock and dirt take up most of the rest of the image.

13. This is a closeup of the pipes being put together next to the dividing curb of that business's parking spaces.

14. Pipes are covered by red tape, but I can't read what it says.

15. Between my building and the western edge of the lot were curbs for the spaces located there. They've been dug out and are now being pushed across the lot to an area where they'll be loaded into a truck and carted away.

16. Busy guy..........

17. The end-of Day-2 shot. You can see where that business on State and Ward is, their spaces and even that white car in the upper left corner,

18. I had to go outside for a minute and later walked over to the E lot to see what that red tape said on it.

19. Here is where that curb between the lot and my building was.

20. I had no idea how long a project this might be.................maybe a week or two? As I was leaving the lot, I saw this sign (I was a little off).

Click to enlarge.


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Offline BLeafe

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Re: The makeover of the E municipal parking lot Day 3 - 4-22-21
« Reply #3 on: April 25, 2021, 06:00:00 PM »
1,2,3. Lubing, connecting, dumping

4,5. Overview + new cuts by the main entrance (stitch)

6. Wider near shot

7. Trucks in the day (vs. ships in the night)

8. CLEAN cement

9. Former island

10-13. Creating new cement curbing between wooden boards

14. Dust-dumping (looks that way, right?)

15. Leveling

16. Healthy lunch(?) from White Castle

17,18. Removing the wooden boards from the hardening curb

Click to enlarge.

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Offline BLeafe

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Re: The makeover of the E municipal parking lot Day 4 - 4-23-21
« Reply #4 on: April 25, 2021, 06:37:47 PM »
1-3. Scraping cement off the wooden boards so they can be used again

4. Measuring/leveling the curbing

5. The digging never ends.............

6. .............until the pizzas are delivered.

7. Updated near view

8. Guard doody

9. The new curbing on the Ward St side

10. Cement in the SW corner of the lot

11. Clean cement meets old cement

12. Smoke break on what looks like a very large Dr Seuss hat

13,14. Removing and scraping wooden boards

15. Old concrete appears to have a weak bladder.

16. Where one of the many lot lights will go - I'm told the lighting units will be flat and parallel-to-the-ground, so none of the surrounding apartment tenants will be affected. Yay!

17. The catch-the-board-in-mid-air shot

18. The end-of-Week-1 shot

19,20. Two after-the-rain-on Sunday-morning shots (4-25-21)

Click to enlarge.

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Offline BLeafe

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Re: The makeover of the E municipal parking lot - 4-26-21
« Reply #5 on: April 27, 2021, 05:27:02 PM »
1,2,3,4. New lot curbing along Ward St

5,6. Wooden boards come off newly-hardened concrete curbing between the lot and the business on the corner of State & Ward.

7. I don't know its formal name, but it looks like a giant nail.

8. Setting up the wooden boards before the concrete pour

9, 10. I don't know what these rolls are, but they're obviously very light.

11, 12, 13. Digging around and under the new curbing that's between the lot and my building, where it appears a light fixture will be placed.

14. Dead sign and meter pole

15. Picking up old curbing on the lot's southern border

16. End of the day shot

17. Is this REALLY the place where this portable sign is needed the most? ("Oh, darn - I had my heart set on parking on that pile of concrete chunks!")

Click to enlarge.


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Offline BLeafe

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Re: The makeover of the E municipal parking lot - 4-27+28-21
« Reply #6 on: May 02, 2021, 05:52:16 PM »
April 27

1-3. Various scenes around the periphery

4. Breaking up all the old curbing pieces from the lot's southern end

5. Creating new curbing between the wooden boards on the Ward St side

6. The little monster that digs into the lot's surface to make grooves for electrical lines and islands

7. Smoothing out the top of the new curbing

8. Future light fixture has to wear a hard hat.

9,10. Cement activity by State St

11,12. Cement activity nearer to my building

13. Cement work by Ward St as Officer Squillace walks past a car that appears to have been ticketed. I think it was parked there most of the day, but I don't know if it belongs to someone who works in the E lot.

14. It appears that the wheelbarrow died from carrying all that old curbing.

15. I would almost consider this to be an artistic scene. It looks like one of the big toilet paper cardboards contains some wooden stick matches (says the laughing mouth in the upper left corner).

16. Almost every day, I try to create a two-photo stitch that shows what the whole lot looked like at the end of the work day. They almost always fail because the near part won't line up the same way the distant part does (or tries to) and I wind up just using a single photo that covers most of the lot. One day the near end looked OK, but the far end had 389 Main collapsing in the middle as if a bomb went off. In this one, 389 survived, but the near islands - which should be a straight line - aren't...............but not disastrously so............so the image is passable.


APRIL 28

Since this project started, I've been woken every morning between 6-6:30am - if not by actual heavy machinery, then by the incessant beeping of various vehicles in the lot as they hit reverse..............over and over....................but not this morning!

I looked out my window. No one was around. Was it a holiday? No. So I just enjoyed my good fortune of a little extra sleep.

17. Later on, I saw two workers just off the lot on the property of the business on the corner of State and Ward. Their lot borders the E lot. I think these guys work on the E lot, but I'm not certain..............and I could see no activity on the business' lot.

I did see Officer Squillace and a couple of lot workers having a discussion on Ward St, but I have no idea what that was about. In any event, no work appeared to be done on this day..............EXCEPT for:

18. Whoever got there early in the morning and removed the city's movable electronic "No Parking" sign, whose usefulness I questioned in this thread on the day before: April 27.

Click to enlarge (especially the stitch).


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Offline BLeafe

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Re: The makeover of the E municipal parking lot - 4-29+30-21
« Reply #7 on: May 02, 2021, 07:33:35 PM »
APRIL 29

1. Another early morning break on the corner business' lot (that business has been closed during the pandemic).

2. A break on the south side

3. Making a dent in that huge pile of old curbing pieces

4. Making a few dents in the truck's bed

5-7. Preparing, delivering and lining up the wooden boards to start the curbing-creation process

8. Dead "Pile Snow Here" signs litter the lot from State St to my building.

9. End-of-the-day lot shot


APRIL 30

10. From 7 floors above, this initially looked like an open-window food truck. Then I zoomed in............oops!

11. How the area behind my building looked as of last Friday at ground level. Note the two trees standing together in the upper middle (you'll know why very soon).

Click to enlarge.


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Offline BLeafe

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Re: The makeover of the E municipal parking lot - 5-1-21
« Reply #8 on: May 02, 2021, 09:42:21 PM »
Why am I writing about activity in the lot on May 1 - a Saturday? These guys are off on weekends.

1-3. Well, for one thing, three trucks showed up on Saturday morning.............but they said "Tree and Lawn Service" on them. Neither of those things existed on the lot and one of the workers was carrying something toward State St, so maybe it was just convenient to park there. Before I knew it, they started to trim a tree that was right next to the SE corner of the lot, but on the street side of the sidewalk.

4. Remember this "Before" photo stitch I posted on Day 1 (4-20-21)? The tree they're working on is on the far left.

5. This video covers what happened next. I thought they were just pruning some branches, as they do periodically, but then the branches started getting bigger and thicker. Before I knew it, the tree was down to a 6'-tall stump and a few minutes later, THAT was gone.


6. And just to reinforce the final image of the tree, here's the still shot:

7. But they were not done yet. I saw the trucks starting to head in my direction. Apparently, no trees were to be near the perimeter of the lot and there are two trees that are on city property just beyond my building's property line. They reach up to about the 6th-floor (I'm on the 7th) and have been a great source for bird (and squirrel) photography for my entire 32 years here.

I've photographed red-tailed hawks, kestrels (the smallest American raptor), blue jays, cardinals, mockingbirds..............even stupid fish crows (and squirrels) at the top of the tree that was on the left. I think that tree was dead, but the branches made great perches for all of them.


8. Believe it or not, it was less than two weeks ago that I watched cement being poured in the lot below as a squirrel was watching the same thing from the tree branch. It felt like COVID-spacing in the upper deck of a game at Yankee Stadium.

9-12. The tree on the right gets taken down first.

13. The top (perch) part of the tree on the left is cut and tossed.

14. When they made the big cut at the bottom, I had to hold my camera out the window. Since I now couldn't see through the viewfinder, I thought I had it properly framed, but..................

15. The two trees are temporarily reunited in their proper left/right positions by their stumps as Lefty gets cut in half. The fence separates the City's property from my building, so you can see how close they were.

16. This might be the last view of the trees.

17. The stumps and other lot detritus

18. The trucks leave.

Click to enlarge.


« Last Edit: May 02, 2021, 09:44:48 PM by BLeafe »
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Offline BLeafe

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Re: The makeover of the E municipal parking lot - 5-3+4-21
« Reply #9 on: May 06, 2021, 11:30:54 AM »
1-3. Digging in the NE corner of the lot

4. Adding a gravel layer on the south end of the lot

5-7. Connecting electricity to a light on the Ward St side

8. Men at work, kids at play

9,10. Dirt fill-in

11. Dunno if it's related, but two Verizon trucks get added to the mix.

12,13. Red tape over the electric pipe and a fine fill over the tape

14. The little monster strikes again near the State St entrance.

15. Interesting collection of shapes

16. Before I saw what it was, I thought this tamper/thumper (how technical!) sounded like a helicopter - it was that fast.

17. Digging in the NW corner

18. The cement post-delivery wash-down

19. Not sure what these are

20. Smoothing out the recent pour on the southern end

Click to enlarge.

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Offline BLeafe

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Re: The makeover of the E municipal parking lot - 5-5+6-21
« Reply #10 on: May 06, 2021, 06:22:04 PM »
MAY 4

For the second consecutive Wednesday, there were zero workers on site. Great way to break up the week, I guess.

1. I take that back. There was ONE worker on site on Wednesday - probably because of his special skill - but I haven't seen him there before (we could have used him at Woodstock!).


MAY 5

OK - back to work, right?

Nope. Another day off.

2-12. I take that back. There was ONE guy who came down from his lofty perch to utilize his "skills" and take some ground-level shots for a change.

13. So it's been half a month - still have no clue as to what this will eventually look like, so here's the next street-level progress report photo stitch.

Click to enlarge.




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Offline BLeafe

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May 7

1. Some now-unneeded equipment gets secured for a trip elsewhere.


May 10

2,3. Cutting & carrying

4. Parts of parking spaces

5. This guy looks jet-propelled.

6. These boots might belong to the jet-propelled guy after he took off from the top of the truck (it WAS the very next picture I took).

7. Downhill cement is NOT jet-propelled (big pic - click it)


May 11

8-12. They're building something in the SW corner of the E lot (behind the First Presbyterian Church), but I have no idea what it is (there's a bit of loose cement caught in mid-air, fresh off the trowel in IMG_9526).


May 12 (part)

13-18. The sidewalk along State gets ripped out.

19. This guy's carrying parking sign poles, but cardboard coffee cups appear to have replaced the signs. There's another view of this on May 15.

(May 12 is continued in the next post.)

Click to enlarge.


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Offline BLeafe

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May 12 (continued)

1. Closeup of cement pour on the Ward St side from my living room

2. A wider shot of the same cement pour and what it looked like 2 hours later.

3. I like the shadows from two angles.

4. Still building in that SW corner - laying bricks over a 5+ hour-long period (see times on right side).

5. Starting to remove the sidewalk on the Ward St side

6. You may recall back on April 28 when I showed two workers sitting on their coolers in the lot of the business on the corner of State and Ward (whose lot borders the E lot). I wasn't sure if they were E lot workers or not, but since nothing was going on at that business, where else could they be working? I still see them there every day at break/lunch time, but on THIS day, I saw them leave and walk across the E lot...............and continue onto the lot of the apartment building on the corner of Passaic and State streets, so these will be the last shots of those guys.

7. Half of the Ward St sidewalk is gone.

8. Some dirt being dumped straight down from my window

9,10. Sitting precariously on one slab of unremoved sidewalk and later removing it.

11. Sign-on-sign

12. A parking sign gets pushed, falls and is carried away.

13-15. More Ward St sidewalk work

16. Meanwhile, over on State St.................

17. The suns sets on a pile of dirt and some equipment.


May 13

18,19. Work continues in that SW corner of the lot

Click to enlarge.





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Offline BLeafe

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Re: The makeover of the E municipal parking lot - 5-14,15-21
« Reply #13 on: May 16, 2021, 05:07:08 PM »
May 14

1-8. Except for the second picture, here are various workers doing various things. The second image shows what became of the Ward St sidewalk (there may be some State St sidewalk mixed in).


May 15

9-20. May 15 was a Saturday, so nobody works on the lot...................except me.

It's nice to get a little different perspective.


Click to enlarge.


« Last Edit: May 16, 2021, 05:09:53 PM by BLeafe »
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Offline BLeafe

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Re: The makeover of the E municipal parking lot - 5-18 to 5-23-21
« Reply #14 on: May 29, 2021, 12:01:27 PM »
5-18-21

1. Just Another Brick In The Wall

2. Cement: hammer out, rinse, dump


5-19-21

3-12. Lots of cement work on the Ward St side


5-22-21

13-15. The 2 stitches (3 images and 2 images) wouldn't line up, so here are the components that you can stitch together in your head. Fortunately, I found a cure for stitching problems the very next day.


5-23-21

I recently got a new iPhone and am starting to fool around with the camera - especially the panoramic function: hit the PANO button and steadily move the phone from left to right...........done! No stitching multiple pictures together that may or may not line up, no muss, no fuss. It DOES take a few tries to get it right, but the results are.................well, see for yourself.

16. The whole lot (well, most of it) from my living room (I'm still working on my technique).

17. This is the prize of the bunch. The only way to make this better would be to have some elevation.

18. Left to right: Second Reformed Church (part), 435 Main, 22 Ward, 417 Main, 407 State, 389 Main, 40 Passaic, 50 Passaic, First Presbyterian Church (part)

19. I have to take back that "no stitching multiple pictures together" statement. Of course, the camera is doing that digitally, but if your left to right movement is off, there may be a glitch in the finished product. There's one in this image, but I still like what I was able to cram into it.

I think I found a new toy to play with. Expect to see more of these.

These panos are big images, so click to enlarge and start scrolling.

(and all images are ©Bob Leafe)


« Last Edit: May 30, 2021, 08:16:23 AM by BLeafe »
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