The tendering process for the expanded Bridge Terminal in Dartmouth continues apace, with about a dozen prospective bidders attending a mandatory job site meeting this morning. The companies range from Dexter Construction, the largest construction firm in the area, to several smaller firms reaching big, and include at least one unnamed company that previously has worked exclusively on the offshore oil platforms—that work is now drying up and the company is expanding its horizons, explain city officials. Such competition will hopefully bring the project costs down.
Still, the tender was structured with a “shopping list” of components that Halifax council can choose to include or not, depending on costs, with the idea of keeping the project within a total project price tag of $9.5 million. Included in that list is landscaping, some park-like amenities above the terminal proper and, most significantly, a curving bridge that stretches from the upper levels along side Dartmouth High School and Thistle Street and Nantucket Avenue over the terminal area to two stairways and an elevator that lower to the bus bays. This bridge allows the bulk of the local pedestrian traffic to access the terminal without crossing bus traffic.
“My biggest fear is that we’re going to lose the bridge,” says Troy Scott, an architect with Sperry & Partners, a Dartmouth firm that designed the terminal. The bridge is “what it’s all about. Otherwise, it’s a fence” along the top of an 18-foot cliff that will be exposed after the hill is dug out to make room for the terminal.
The bridge adds about $2 million in costs to the project constitutes about $2 million of the project costs [edited for clarity, 4:20pm], says Scott. Without it, pedestrians will have to cross the bus lanes where they enter Nantucket and Thistle and “Dartmouth loses” a signature architectural feature—the upper park and three lantern-like entry points above the stairwells and elevator shafts.
In addition to the shopping list, Scott revealed at the meeting that the rock to be excavated at the site is entirely pyritic—that is, it contains acids that can present problems. Such rock can be disposed of in the harbour, and the developer of the nearby King’s Wharf project in downtown Dartmouth has agreed to accept the rock, for a fee, as he needs fill to fill in part of the harbour at that location. It’s unknown if that disposal will add to Bridge Terminal costs or not.
For tendering purposes, the Bridge Terminal project is coupled with a smaller Highfield Park terminal rebuild, with the aim of attaining economies of scale. The companies will present bids by August 31; it will take about two weeks to process the bids, and Halifax council will award the winning bid in late September. Work will likely begin in October, but as concrete work isn’t typically done in the winter, there may be a bit of down time until spring.
This article appears in Aug 5-11, 2010.
Once again the MSM is fast asleep as Tim racks up another scoop.
Tell me why I don’t buy The Comical Herald.
They better include some sort of bridge. But they need one over Nantucket Ave too, or some kind of synchronized signals. That crosswalk currently there is not only deadly for pedestrians but contributes to horrible traffic backups onto the bridge or delays in getting to it.
If you put the thing where it should be, over by the mall, on the other side of Nantucket, you don’t need a bridge. You don’t lose Commons land with trees, and the businesses don’t lose customers. This is a colossal waste of taxpayers money to put something where it will cause unnecessary pedestrian deaths while damaging nearby businesses by sucking their customers away on to park land to wait for a bus (that will be late, or drive right by you).
Maybe the mall’s managers are too slow to get it, but this will kill their business, though if it were built around behind the mall (the road is already there – right out to the crosswalk by the McDonalds which could become a signalized intersection with a left turn for the busses) and they punched a hole though the middle of the mall to open it up and make it open and safe, their mall would thrive from the traffic. If they had time to think this through, and were wanting to save the business, they’d be offering to help build it there.
Or maybe they just want to let it go out of business and build condos there instead.
I predict that upon the first death they will close that crosswalk by Scotiabank/Sportsplex driveway – the one that currently backs traffic up to the tolls. And then we’ll be forking out to build a more expensive pedestrian bridge (no one ever uses those except to drop things on cars from) over Nantucket to a decaying lost mall. It will probably take the form of an ill shaped thing that a politician or a planner thinks matches well with the architectural detail on top of the bus station, but in reality looks like 1950’s Russian architecture.
And then the neighbourhood will surely be happy.
Is there still an option to get to the bus level without using the elevator or stairs?
…who at the Herald cares about transit users anyway? The Herald’s readership is made up of the oldest — and cheapest — common denominator; bad news for progress, including public transit.
Priuschic – jump, fall or play mountaineer.
DHS students will be able to combine Enviro studies with Math as they calculate the GHG emissions from the excavation and trucking of thousands of tons of rock to King’s Wharf.
They can also calulate the cubic yards/metres to be removed and also the tons/tonnes to be moved after HRM supplies the technical drawings.
This project has tremendous teaching/learning posssibilities.
Step forward Cheech & Chong…….
@Brewnoser: Has anyone been killed at that crosswalk yet? Has the mall died yet? You make it sound like we’re doing a terrible thing by moving the bus depot from some amazing location to its location beside the Sportsplex. Nothing is changing in terms of location, so why would you expect fatalities at the crosswalk or the business of the mall to change? Let’s not be dramatic here.
@Joeblow: What are you getting at? Are you suggesting that we shouldn’t excavate rock or shape terrain? That we should should just build surface parking in HRM instead of sapce-efficient parking garages? Give me a break. Halifax isn’t flat and it doesn’t have much in the way of soil. Any construction project here is going to require some form of excavation. At least they’re being synergistic about removing the rock and taking it somewhere where it’s needed close by. Kings Wharf could be importing the fill from a much more distant area, and what would the impact of that be?
hipp5 – I don’t know. I’d be surprised if no one has been. Mid block crosswalks with four lanes are normally not even permitted they re so dangerous. I suspect that one was put in because so many people just jaywalked.
If the Transit terminal works for the busses, lets assume more ridership. That’e more people crossing there, more backup, more impatient drivers, and more chance that someone will be hit, and maybe killed.
Yes, I overdramatized a bit. But people tend to notice that.
That mall has to be teetering. Getting more people close to it, close enough to be able to do a wee bit of shopping in between busses, or even after getting off the bus, would have to improve things.
Why spend money to put people in the middle of an urban forest, when they could be put where they’d have the convenience of services, and stimulate the local economy? Makes no sense. Did anyone ask the Mall owner? I think it is Homburg – they are normally pretty smart.
hipp5 – consider the non-requirement for rock removal & transport, as well as the reduced cost of at least $4,000,000 if the terminal was located parallel with Nantucket. Adjusting the site to suit people with disablities is a minor cost issue.
Operating cost would be reduced because a run off treatment facility would not be required.
King’s Wharf could get their fill from across the street at the 32 year old empty lot owned by WDC. Any building planned for that site would require rock removal and would cost a lot less than $4,000,000; perhaps even make a condo development feasible but HRM doesn’t think like that. Innovation is an alien concept in City Hall.