Working downtown has been rather ho-hum in the last few years. There hasn't been much happening - a few shootings, hit and runs, the occasional OD'ng Street kid - pretty standard, really. All of this doesn't tend to impact my day to day that much.
Then, something radical started happening about 2 years ago. First, it was the complete remodel of the Courthouse. Now, in all truth, this didn't impact me per se, but I understand that others were quite perterbed about the permenant moving of the Post Office from that building and up the street about 8 blocks. So much for the functional "Core" of downtown.
After that, it was announced that a major renovation would occour on 5th and 6th Ave (our lovely, trend-setting bus mall), complete with a dedicated max line along it.The merits of a max line that does little more than span our transit mall are weak. Sure, it connects up with the other 4 lines that run to the different corners of town, but the amount of track traffic and trains that will be needed to make that more efficient is mind numbing. Don't get me started about the cost.
Along with our lovely transit mall, we have the conversion of Meier and Frank to Macy's. Somewhere in that conversion, they decided that not only did they need to remodel the store, but that they were going to turn the upper half of the building into a 4-star (possibly 5-star) hotel called the Nines. Sounds great. Except for a few annoying details.
The Nines is being constructed by a different construction company than the Macy's remodel. Since it's a downtown building with little access to the upper floors for construction traffic (it's an OLD building), the decision was made to put in external, temporary construction elevators on the side of the building. The Nines construction crew put theirs in rather quickly. Then, not to be outdone, the Macy's crew put one on the other side of the building.
For whatever reason, the Nines people believe that they needed a crane to get this job done. Putting a crane up next to an existing building is a pain. They had already closed down one lane of the 6th Ave bus mall, so they put a big ol' crane up right on the side walk. Just loveley.
To top it all off: The Nines is cutting an atrium through several floors of the building. There's no existing atrium - there's barely holes between floors for stairs and escalators. So, where does all that concrete go when it's removed from the floor plates? You guessed it: Right out the window. Fortunatly, they have had the good sense to install a chute to keep the debris and dust from filling the air and making a mess of the entire area. But the noise. Oh the noise. Multiple times a day - CRASH! I feel sorry for the people in my office that work on that side of the building. Wait, no I don't. There's a bunch of red-neck warriors over on my side of the building right now using my fire escape as a staging platform for their demolition work on a cooling tower on our building. Thank god for noise cancelling headphones.
Annoyingly,
Gregsta'
