11 December 2007

Going Deep


It is curious to be in the work site in the dark. The days are too short now to have any time during the week to see it in the light.

I peered out from the circle of white under the streetlight. There is a new featureless plain where the old garden apartments used to be, and a whole new cityscape beyond that could not be seen for a half century.

It has the temporary aspect of a Flanders Field of long ago, with puddles in great trenches marking the edge of the pit to come. The crane that will set the pile-driver looms in the middle distance, and various earthmovers are left where their operators concluded the last swipe at the dirt at nightfall.

One of the smaller apartment buildings still stands. It had been painted white in some long-ago modernization, an anomaly in the development. It is clearly marked for destruction, and the windows and door gape like lost teeth. Still, it stands, though now alone.

A few weeks ago, when there was still fall in the air and the leaves clung in stubborn color, the white hulk had been surrounded by stately trees. The workers numbered their thick trunks all the old trees with florescent paint, as though to catalog and save them. Then they clear-cut the property.

They are going to have to go deep into the earth to accommodate the garage that will house the cars of the mobile residents of the new complex, since the plan will quadruple the number of vehicles in this end of the Buckingham niegborhood.

I could see the lights of Ballston in the far distance. According to the literature, the intent is to shield the one-family homes in The Forest from the large apartment block by dozens of town-homes. They call it a “buffer,” though it will not shield Big Pink. Rather, it will embrace us at its nether end.

I do not completely understand the concept, since placing the high-density buildings further from the Metro will force the residents to permeate the development like a membrane.

The big new building- first of two- will require three levels of parking to be hewn down into the red soil. The process is one you have seen; and which I watched with interest, day by day, from the roof garden at 1100 New York Avenue downtown.

The erection of the twelve-story tower there, complete with plenty parking for workers and visitors, lasted almost as long as my time at that company. I had a private project, which was to snap a daily picture of the activity at the site. I thought it might become one of those little movies that I could post to YouTube, with witty commentary.

Each day I would take position on the roof, look at the ants below, and snap my picture.

I had the best of intentions. I was going to make it a complete story. I could see what was coming, so one summer afternoon in 2004, I walked across the little park and talked to the owner of one of the last little shop that stood on the block just before he vacated. He said he had held out as long as he could, and then succumbed to the inevitable,

The garage was the tough part. Knocking down the buildings was straightforward. Shaving the earth and carting away the debris was simple. I was interested, of course, since the knocking down of buildings was part of my career.

The garage was hard. The perimeter had to be defined with long iron girders that would be nailed into the earth with the pile drivers, stabbing as deep as the garage required. It is a long process, and a loud one. The banging of the steam-driven hammer, steel on steel, went on for weeks. Each of the girders went down at precise intervals, placed just so. When driven to their full depth, the I-beams formed a frame for wooden planks that could be added, one by one, as the earthmovers began to work.

First at one corner, even as the tumult progressed with the hammer at the others. A great claw ripped the earth, hoisting each bucket in a graceful arc to a waiting truck. As the excavation progressed, part of the site became a ramp for the trucks to enter.

At the end of the fall, when the rains and flurries came, the pit was four stories deep in the ground, and the workers began the cement pour on the floor.

My company last long enough for the tower to emerge, floor-by-floor, pillar frame, pour and post. It went up with remarkable speed, and I was impressed with the technology of the modern building, and imagined the aim-points I would recommend to knock the structure flat again, should anyone ask.

I would recommend precision munitions at the diagonal on the key structural pillars, concentrating on floor three where there is bend in the load-bearing pillar to accommodate the atrium above the street entrance. That should be enough to make the overburden collapse spontaneously, though these are strong things. Part of it might stay up.

The exterior glass curtain walls went on the tower in the blink of an eye, and the building was ready for the internal fitting out, and the decorators just at the moment the French bought my company, and I realized I had to move on, project incomplete.

That is not going to be the case for the building across the parking lot from Big Pink. We do not have roof access here, as I did downtown. It is too bad. The view is quite extraordinary, and since we predated the Sector Master Plan of 1980, although that had been Frances Freed's plan, back in the day.

The Jumper from the East Wing in 1970 made the insurance too expensive to permit the residents to go up there for the view. Balcony leaps are equally effective, but those are covered by the individual unit owner's liability coverage. Rooftop leaps are governed by the Condominium Association master policy.

Accordingly, the Board met and sealed the roof.

The angle from my balcony to the work site is such that I do not have a good shot. I would have to lean further out than I am completely comfortable, and would probably require rappelling gear to avoid additional premium on my homeowners insurance.

Accordingly, if I am to follow the construction of the big new residential building, I am going to have to do it from ground level.

Copyright 2007 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

Close Window