Thursday, November 04, 1999
Fort Washington workers pounding away
BY TANYA ALBERT
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Whether it's 2 p.m. or 2 a.m., plan to hear pile drivers pounding on Cincinnati's riverfront for the next four to six months.
Fort Washington Way construction crews will continue to work 24 hours a day to meet their August deadline.
The downtown expressway, a new Second Street that will serve as a transit center for buses, and the new floodwall need to be finished by then to coincide with the opening of the Bengals' Paul Brown Stadium.
“This is to keep on schedule,” said John Deatrick, Cincinnati's Fort Washington Way project engineer.
The $280 million project, which includes straightening the highway to make it safer, improving the Third Street Viaduct, making sewer improvements and other work, started in summer 1998. It's scheduled to be built twice as fast as a project that size usually would be.
The continued overnight work isn't expected to increase the price of the project, Mr. Deatrick said.
The noise shouldn't be any louder than it has been for downtown residents trying to sleep. The city still gets some calls about the noise being a nuisance at night. Some downtowners say it hasn't bothered them recently.
“I only hear it in the day,” said Mike Brocker, who lives downtown and has no problem sleeping between midnight and 6 a.m.
Downtown resident A. Curtright doesn't expect to be disturbed, either: “It seems like they're slowing down the noise. This summer it was bad for a while, but it's gotten better.”
But the noise is noticeable and some residents are losing sleep.
Downtown resident Catherine Derby hears it, but realizes noise is a part of downtown living and she has learned to live with it.
“They've been banging away at night,” she said. “I'd love to get a reduction in the rent, but that won't happen.”
The pile-driving noise planned for the next four to six months shouldn't be as noticeable to residents on the west side of the project as it was this summer, Mr. Deatrick said.
Then, construction crews were tearing down old parts of the highway close to apartments at Fourth and Plum streets.
This overnight pile-driving work will be more centrally located on the riverfront, away from residential areas. Also, the work isn't as noisy as tearing down concrete and steel, he said.
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