As Downtown Chappaqua Work Nears Finish, Difficulties Remain

The long and sometimes painful Chappaqua infrastructure and streetscape project is in its final stage, but not before testing the patience of downtown merchants and residents and straining the town’s budget for the work.

New Castle Supervisor Robert Greenstein said that the updated timeline calls for all sidewalk work and the installation of street trees to be done by Oct. 4, the final paving along South Greeley Avenue and King Street to be finished by Oct. 11 and for the bluestone surfaces to be in place by Oct. 18.

Traffic light and pedestrian poles are also expected to be finished during the week of Oct. 7, he said.

“We’re actually pretty close to being done,” Greenstein said. “There will be some checklist items after, but it pretty much will be done with the final paver by Oct. 18.”

Final punch list items are scheduled to be finished by Nov. 22. If the latest schedule remains intact, all work will be done before the start of the holiday season.

Greenstein explained that various delays have complicated the project. Those included Con Edison responding slowly to moving utility poles, the discovery of contaminated soil in multiple locations and two underground oil tanks this summer found near the corner of South Greeley Avenue and King Street in front of the building that houses Great Stuff once crews began digging up the sidewalks.

In each instance involving the soil and the underground tanks, the state Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) was required to be notified for soil testing before work could resume, Greenstein said.

Along with a wet spring that repeatedly halted sidewalk work, the project will be completed nearly a year after the original forecast if the latest timeline is accurate.

Greenstein said last week that while final costs are not yet known, the town is definitely over budget. In May 2017, officials pared down the streetscape to come in at $11.6 million for the project. That doesn’t include a $1 million fee for Boswell Engineering to oversee the project and another $1 million for contingency. All of the contingency has been exhausted, used overwhelmingly toward the environmental mitigation measures, Greenstein said.

“We’ve gone over budget,” Greenstein said. “There’s no question about it. I don’t know the exact number yet. There’s some change orders and some credits we’ll be getting.”

Councilwoman Ivy Pool said most of the work, perhaps as much as 90 percent of the project, consisted of infrastructure upgrades, including water, sewer and drainage. As a result, it was a large undertaking and the town was overly optimistic about the timeline, she said.

“It’s going to be beautiful, absolutely, but the critical infrastructure work that needed to happen, and it was extensive in nature, so I think the notion that it was going to be a quick turnaround was flawed,” Pool said.

In addition to the work and the budget, town officials have had to manage the expectations of those who have been affected the most – store owners who faced the prospect of having their foot traffic and business dwindle because of the work that started in mid-2017.

Phyllis Jacobson, owner of Petticoat Lane on King Street near South Greeley Avenue where sidewalks were ripped up in July, said she and other merchants knew that they were going to be facing steep challenges. However, many shoppers were understandably reluctant to endure the inconveniences, she said. Jacobson thanked her core group of customers for continuing their support.

“It’s terrible and the stores are all having a very hard time staying in business,” Jacobson said. “People stop coming to town.”

Across the street, George’s Men’s Shop owner Toni Magnotta said initially her store didn’t see much of a downturn since it is a service-oriented business. Dry cleaning is the largest portion of the service that is provided.

Lately, Magnotta has seen business tail off once the sidewalk was broken up. Local residents and customers have noticed as well, she said.

“Every single customer that comes in here complains about outside. Every single one,” Magnotta said. “They ask us, every single one, they ask us when is it going to be done. I don’t know, usually when we are given target dates, they don’t usually hit them.”

Chappaqua resident Ed Brown, who visits downtown regularly, said not only has the project appeared to have been poorly executed but the conditions outside have been dangerous. On Aug. 23, Brown said he was at the Citibank ATM vestibule when he tripped and fell.

Since there hasn’t been final paving, there have been raised drains and other impediments that can trip up pedestrians, he said.

Access to some stores on certain days was impossible because the orange cones and barriers were sometimes similar to a maze with a dead end, he said.

“The company contracted to do the work had absolutely no respect for the community and its citizens,” Brown said.

Greenstein acknowledged that coordination of the sidewalk work has been problematic, particularly near the South Greeley Avenue-King Street intersection. A sidewalk should not have been torn up until the subcontractor was ready to do the work, he said.

“There’s no question that the sidewalk by Family Britches and Great Stuff has been excavated for way too long,” Greenstein said. “There was the problem with the oil tanks, that was a problem. That was not our fault but there’s no question that these sidewalks took too long.”

Pool, who was not yet on the board when the town signed the contracts for the project, said she was hesitant to criticize in hindsight. However, she would have liked to have seen a performance-based contract from the outset. Without that, it has hampered the town to hold the vendors to a project timeline, Pool said.

“There are delays that are genuine and things that have come up along the way and also there’s been some miscommunication and miscalculation about the scope of the project along the way,” she said.

Work on South Greeley Avenue near Woodburn Avenue has mostly been completed, including the sitting wall near Pizza Station and pouring concrete for the sidewalks.  On North Greeley Avenue by Sotheby’s, the sidewalks have now been poured while the sidewalks and the concrete for the brick pavers by Starbucks will be put down this week.