CAPTION: Cambridge Street is almost finished. The five-year project may be the longest ever for a quarter-mile stretch of road.




As the $6 million-plus reconstruction of Cambridge Street comes to a close, residents all over the West End and Beacon Hill are asking: “Why did it take so long?”

It’s unlikely that anyone knows the full story. But from conversations the Beacon Hill Times has recorded, our own news reports over the years, certain documents we have procured, as well as a web site the contractor, Todesca Equipment, maintains, we have pieced together a story of the delays.

As to who is at fault — there seems to be plenty of blame to go around. The delays appear to be the result of the city’s good and bad judgment, inadequate subcontractors, pressures to change the design, which had begun more than 15 years before the street got built, and Mass Highway’s lack of urgency in completing this quarter-mile stretch of street.

Lawsuits

• The original electrical sub-contractor bid on the project in January, 2002. By the time they were scheduled to begin work in March, 2004, they said they could not do the project for their 2002 prices. The dispute went to court and Todesca could not hire another electrical contractor until the matter was resolved.

• The second electrical contractor, Best Electric, has had various difficulties that have not yet become lawsuits, but the company has had difficulty maintaining an appropriate work schedule.

City and state agency delays

• The general contractor, Todesca Equipment, bid on the project on January 29, 2002, and was finally awarded the project in June. Mass Highway sent a notice to proceed in late August, 2002. According to a news report in the Beacon Hill Times at that time, Mass Highway was aware that by the time the contractor ordered materials and set up a field office, little time was left to work before winter set in.

• Traffic shop drawings submitted to the Boston Transportation Department in November 2003 were not returned until 17 months later in April, 2005, according to Mass. Highway.

• The state highway department ran out of money in March, 2003, so Todesca was pulled off the job and didn’t return until several weeks after the new fiscal year began in July, 2003.

• The contractor claims the city delayed in issuing permits to subcontractors throughout the project.


Redesign

• Because the original design did not account for the myriad utilities under Cambridge Street, the mast arm foundations had to be redesigned in order to make them secure. Planting locations also had to be redone when utilities were located.

• Because the original design of the street had been started at least ten years before construction actually began, opinions and conditions changed. Mass. General asked for a longer turn lane into North Grove Street, and installing a two-way street on formerly one-way New Chardon sent portions of the project back to the drawing board, as did minor changes in the configuration of the Sudbury Street intersection.

• Drainage at Sudbury Street had to be redesigned since the original plans had drains emptying into the sewer system.

• New technology, such as count-down pedestrian lights, were substituted for lights that were standard when the design was first begun.

• Structural soil, which wasn’t available when the original design was completed, was substituted for standard material. It took a whole summer for the mix to pass the tests that were conducted on the new material.

• An irrigation system was added, despite the fact that the original neighborhood group working on the improvements had rejected such a system because they are so likely to fail. Changes were also made to hydrants in the sidewalk because the first ones installed were getting damaged by normal use.

• The city removed iron work, including tree pit fences, from the original design. According to Jennifer Mehigan, deputy press secretary for Mayor Menino, the city couldn’t afford to maintain them. “Regarding your question about why the plans for Cambridge Street have changed, the original design plans were made some 10 years ago,” she said in an email. “At that time certain outside agencies made promises of maintenance and the city was unable to get final commitment from those that made those promises. Because the city is ultimately responsible for the property and thinking about the public investment, we had to go back and look at what could and could not be maintained by our departments and therefore, certain ornamental implements had to be removed from the plans. We had to re-evaluate the special elements of the project in light of what the Business Association is looking to maintain at the current time, and we re-adjusted the work by adding improved landscape support systems (added irrigation systems) and deleting ornamental features because we were unable to maintain them.”


City restrictions

• To speed traffic between April, 2003, and October, 2005, the Boston Transportation Department limited the hours the contractor could work. In the inbound lane, work could begin only after 9:30 a.m. In the outbound lane, the contractor had to stop work at 3 p.m. No work in the intersections was allowed before 9:30 a.m.

• The city decided that security would be compromised if underground work was done on Cambridge Street before the 2004 Democratic Convention. The city also told the contractor to complete most of the brick sidewalks and pave before the convention. This was out of sequence and before the underground work was complete. Some of this work had to be redone.

• After the Mass. Pike tunnel collapsed in July, 2006, BTD shut down all work on Cambridge Street for about three weeks. The sub-contractors went on to other jobs and did not return for more than six weeks.

Private projects

• The contractor claims that construction at Grampy’s, Charles River Plaza, MGH, 100 Cambridge Street and 250 Cambridge Street also delayed the work.

credit: Fiona Gerety

CAPTION: The busy Arlington Street eastbound exit off Storrow Drive is a necessary one, say local groups.




While other neighborhood groups are coalescing over how to fix the Storrow Drive tunnel which is crumbling between Clarendon and Arlington Streets, the Beacon Hill Civic Association and the Esplanade Association are not yet ready to stand behind any one option.

Both the Back Bay Association, the neighborhood’s business association, and the Neighborhood Association of the Back Bay, which primarily represents residents, will ask to “fix the tunnel and call it a day,” in letters to the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation, the agency that has the responsibility for Storrow Drive. They will support rehabbing the tunnel and changing none of the locations of the entrances and exits, a plan known as Option A. Letters were due Friday.

The BHCA and TEA will not recommend a particular option but instead will submit questions and principles it wants DCR to consider as it goes forward. Most committee members have said they are sorry they have been asked to consider options for the tunnel but haven’t been able to look at how to reduce traffic on Storrow. “Most of use are not ready to choose an option because we are concerned we don’t have enough information,” said Steve Young, chair of Traffic and Parking for the BHCA.

Young said not choosing an option shouldn’t hurt the BHCA’s chances of lobbying for what they want in the redo. “It doesn’t negate what we are seeking to accomplish,” he said.

The BHCA did submit a list of five principles they would like considered regardless of which option is chosen. They include: increasing parkland if possible, but not decreasing or negatively impacting the current parkland; improving the use of Storrow as a parkway, not a highway; enhancing access to the Esplanade; not increasing traffic at Charles Circle or on Charles Street; and coordinating the Storrow redo with the Longfellow Bridge project.

Though other local neighborhood groups are pushing for Option A, Young said a lot will be up to the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs, which will review the project’s environmental impact report. “ ‘A’ doesn’t of itself address the improvements and concerns that we are referring to,” said Young. “But the issue is going to be how does EOEA look at what DCR is recommending and all of us are saying.”

For neighboring Back Bay, the problem with the other five options now up for consideration is that most of them close exits and entrances onto Storrow Drive and put more traffic onto Back Bay streets.

“The Back Bay Association supports maintaining all access points and ramps in the rebuilding of Storrow Drive,” said Meg Mainzer-Cohen, the association’s president and executive director. Late Friday, NABB switched its support to Option B.

Mainzer-Cohen points out that traffic counts show 9,000 cars per day coming from the homes and businesses of the Back Bay get on Storrow Drive going westbound at Berkeley Street. That is about 16 percent of all the cars going in that direction on Storrow.

The eastbound exit at Arlington is another ramp that would be lost in most options other than A. Mainzer-Cohen points out that about 20 percent of the 53,000 cars going east on Storrow Drive get off at Arlington Street, with the majority of them presumably going to Back Bay businesses and homes.

“The loss of that move would have impacts not only on the health of businesses but on the whole neighborhood too,” she predicted.

NABB leaders would not go on the record as to what their letter would say, but more than one reliable source said NABB would also urge DCR to choose repairing the existing tunnel as the preferred option.

“None of the other options are better than where we are today,” said one neighborhood leader.

Option B puts all the traffic at ground level, with stop lights and at-grade crossing. This configuration backs up traffic to levels that concern DCR officials. Option B3 depresses the roads slightly but doesn’t cover them. This is an option that many have seen as one of the best, except for the closing of the Arlington Street off-ramp.

Option C eliminates the tunnel in the eastbound direction but builds one on the westbound side, a configuration that has garnered few supporters.

Option D and D3 bury both directions of the road in a tunnel. These options are the most costly and take the most time to build.

Some individuals who were members of the advisory committee considering options regarding the Storrow Drive tunnel area have said they will not identify a preferred option until next week when the committee is due to discuss the options for the last time. They said they will submit questions to DCR about all the options.

DCR must identify its preferred option by July 30, when it files a draft environmental impact report

“Our position is that you should try to use a major project like this as an opportunity to accomplish something different, to improve the surrounding areas in the process,” said Young. “We want to do all we can to see if there isn’t a way to make those improvements.”

At 2 p.m last Tuesday, a man wearing an orange shirt and carrying a gray shotgun on his waistband walked into Bank of America and presented a note to the teller demanding money, police officer Ted Boyle reported.

After the teller refused to give him anything, he fled and security guard Frank Lombardo followed him, Boyle said.

Ted Dorenkamp of Beacon Hill Plumbing and Heating saw Lombardo chasing the culprit on Myrtle and Irving streets. He said when the culprit turned left on Revere Street. Lombardo got close to him but then backed off. Dorenkamp ran up to his office to call 911, and by the time he returned to Revere Street, the culprit had been stopped by a foot officer and two patrol cars at the first door on the right past Garden Street. This catch occurred at 2:20 p.m, according to Boyle.

Police immediately brought the culprit back to the bank where they checked surveillance cameras and witnesses identified him as the suspect. He was arrested and charged with attempted armed robbery. Boyle confirmed no money was taken.

Bob Matson of Revere Street reported that the bank was closed when he went down later to make a deposit, and there was a sign on the door directing customers to the Center Plaza branch.

Police later found the suspect’s note of intent on a side street, Boyle reported.

Most Beacon Hill residents just walk by the piles of cast-off books, CDs and furniture left on the curb when someone moves from the neighborhood, though some of us might save the odd Pottery Barn vase or much-loved paperback from being doomed to landfill. But one Hancock Street resident, Sara Sorge, looked at the urban detritus around her and saw potential.

Sorge, who works at a local marketing firm, knew about established services like Craigslist and Freecycle, but wondered if there wasn’t a better way for people to connect. Something simpler. Something more neighborly. “I grew up in the suburbs, where people would often put up signs to have yard sales, and I wondered why that didn’t happen here,” she said. “I’ve always had an entrepreneurial bug, so I started working on a proposal.” Her service, Cityardsale.com, debuted this year.

Buyers who log into Sorge’s site can search through the sale listings by neighborhood or by item for free, and sellers can post their items for sale, time, and location for an introductory fee of $5.

“It just seemed like such a waste that there was all this stuff lying out on the curb because there wasn’t an easy way for people to get rid of it and maybe make some cash,” Sorge said. “I thought, ‘What if there’s someone two blocks away who might really be able to use that lamp or that chair and won’t get the chance because it’s been hauled off before she saw it was there?’”

To Sorge, a Loyola graduate who worked in information technology before starting her marketing career, the answer was obvious: create a site that allows sellers to invite prospective buyers into their homes at a set time. “When you’re trying to sell something on Craigslist, you might have to check your e-mail every two seconds, or answer a lot of phone calls, and then you have to go home at lunchtime to meet the person,” Sorge says. “If you’re moving out of a neighborhood, you have enough to do without having to worry about that. You don’t want to be leashed to a phone all the time.”

When she started her service, Sorge limited Cityardsale.com’s range to Beacon Hill and the Back Bay; less than a year later, the site serves 19 neighborhoods including Charlestown, South Boston and Cambridge. She’s looked at nearly 58,000 page visits, 6,000 unique visitors — and a lot of intriguing entries. “There was this great listing, very early on. The description read, ‘Meet my Shopaholic Sister: Must-See-Sale!’ The sisters saw it as a fun way to clean out their closets, meet new people, and make some money,” Sorge said.

Anyone can use the service, but Sorge envisions the site being geared primarily toward Boston students, a notoriously migratory and cash-starved population. “Students move around a lot, and they need to get rid of things. If I can give them a convenient way of doing that, I’m happy.”

She’s especially happy to have found a neighborhood to call her own — happy enough that it’s unlikely she’ll be hosting a moving sale of her own anytime soon. “I love just about everything about the Hill. When I moved here from New York, it just felt like home right away.” And Sorge said she’s pleased to do her part to help keep the curbs of her adopted neighborhood a little cleaner.

“I want to protect the environment as much as the next mainstream person, but the way I see it is, it’s all about making connections with other people. There’s something so neighborly about living in a city; why shouldn’t people make use of the networks they have to help each other out?” she asked.

Right now, as summer approaches and most of the students have left, Cityardsale.com is as quiet as the Hill itself. But Sorge isn’t worried: the urge to buy stuff is as eternal as the need to get rid of it — and the very human desire to connect with the neighbors is perhaps the most eternal need of all.

credit: K. Taylor




Tokyo-based artist Itsuo Kiritani, who is known for his interpretation of sometimes gritty urban scenes, painted Myrtle Street last week. His wife, the former Elizabeth Whitin, used to live at 118 Myrtle.

One comes to take Boston for granted. We’re used to walking everywhere, encountering people behaving like people and seeing what there is to do and buy along our streets and sidewalks.

So after entertaining out-of-town visitors, which many residents do during the summer, one has a new appreciation of what this city has to offer.

One recent experience started with a whale watch, an activity denied to our land-locked visitors from the West. It was not only the tons (literally) of three kinds of whales that our visitors got to see, it was also the view of Boston from the harbor that was compelling. The Port of Boston may not be what it once was, but it is still pretty interesting with planes flying overhead and glimpses of freight and passenger vessels docked along the inner harbor.

Later, the visitors enjoyed lunch at an outdoor restaurant and a Red Sox game at night.

But as good as the heavy entertainment was, it was the time between that showed what a nice place Boston is for visiting, and by extension, what good place for living.

There were children along, and they walked miles without complaining. Why would anyone complain when they had a chance to work their way through the international crowds on Newbury Street, overhearing unfamiliar languages and looking at all the goods the world has to offer? Another walk was up Charles Street, where displays at the level of an eight-year-old’s eyes kept children so interested that no one thought to complain, even though by then little legs had walked miles.

The Frog Pond on the Common stopped the little ones in their tracks even though the parents had not brought appropriate clothing in which they could get wet. They mollified themselves by getting a fresh lemonade at a stand nearby.

Walks through Chinatown and Faneuil Hall Marketplace also kept their attention. Again, no one — adults or children — appeared fatigued.

The only time anyone flagged was along the Greenway. Too many buildings are understandably turned away from what was an overhead roadway that no one wanted to look at. But owners of the buildings need to rethink the facades that lie along that potential park.

One resident who was along for the walks complained that the Greenway would never be more than a wide median in a busy roadway, a criticism that looked too accurate for comfort as things stand now.

Except for the Greenway walk, when the children began to ask how long it would be until they got to the destination, Boston held up well in terms of beauty, interest, convenience and entertainment. We know we live here because of those qualities, but it helps to have visitors to remind us.