When Barges Appear on the Construction Site…
Carroll stood beside the riverside and looked at the river. I followed his eye and finally saw the view of a barge’s backside. He told me that the barge was leaving and he needed to make sure everything was in process. Wait… barge on a construction site?
Tom O Carroll, 42 years old. He is a laborer works for Cornell Tech’s Campus construction on the Roosevelt Island. He has been work here for nearly 10 months. His duty includes supervising the barges and managing the delivery trucks. Carroll told me, “This is my first time to deal with barges, I’ve never done this before.”
When the project directors of Cornell started to plan their construction steps, they knew they would take the advantage of both Hudson River and East River. Therefore, barges became the major carrier of the construction instead of the traditional delivery trucks.
The story begins here…
Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg raised a competition in 2011, a bid for the chance to establish a technology campus on Roosevelt Island between many prestigious colleges. The competition aims to encourage the city’s technology sector. Cornell won the project and got 2.1 million square feet and 100 million funds to build its new technology campus. However, they knew it’s not an easy task.
Roosevelt Island is a limited island located between Manhattan and Queens and surrounded by Hudson River and East River. The island is only 2 miles long with an 800feet maximum in width. The only entrance on the island is the Roosevelt Island Bridge, all vehicles depend on it. The bridge has a 36-ton weight restriction, which means a limitation of the heavy construction trucks.
In addition, the Island only has one major road — the Main Street. The Main Street is only open for two-way traffic and is designed being only 38 feet in width. The narrow main road makes the construction situation even worse. In order to build the campus need an estimated of 6,289 trucks, which is 12,778 truck trips. Clearly, the main street unable to deal with so many trips while public buses, personal vehicles, and residents also need to use the same street. These facts forced the Cornell tech group to come up a new way for construction — the barges.
“In 2014, Cornell Tech launched the largest voluntary barging operation in New York City,” said by Jovana Rizzo, the PR representative for Cornell Tech program, “the marine company Cornell has corporate with called Miller Marine.”
According to Andrew Winter, the director of capital project of Cornell, “there are two kinds of barges are used for this construction. One barge is attached to the riverbed to fix other barges. It will stay the same location for several months. Other barges are used for transporting materials.”
The construction started in 2014. The first task was to demolish the Coler-Goldwater hospital located in the same location of the project. Because of this project, the hospital first announced to move out all patients on 2010 and closed on Dec. 31, 2013. The Goldwater hospital was a welfare and special care hospital, with nearly 2,000 disabled people and patients lived in.
To start construction, the government moved these patients to two places: independent apartment on the main street and other hospitals on the Island. Most patients were satisfied with their arrangement.
“I love my current life here, I got more freedom than in the hospital,” said Nancy Brown, a disabled woman who had lived in the hospital for 14 years and now lives in her independent apartment. (More information about the hospital and patient click here)
After patients moving out, Cornell needed to demolish the hospital. In order to take away the debris and demolitions, it’s the time for the barges.
“The barge deals with three kinds of materials,” Winter said, “the interior demolitions, hazard materials, and structure demolitions.” Winter mentioned that the first piece of the project was to take away the interior demolitions, such as interior partitions, ceilings, and doors, etc. Therefore, the hazard materials would be exposed. The second piece of the project was to take away the hazard materials. These materials would be put in the containers, sealed, and moved by the barge. Finally, once the hazard materials had been moved, the barge took some of the structure demolitions away while the left stay on the site. These materials went to a land site in New Jersey called Keasbey for recycling.
The process of taking away all the debris took 10 months, and Cornell done with this. Now, Cornell needs the barge to do something else.
“Steel,” Carroll told me, “the barge brings in the steel frame for building the hall” The steel for the construction use are very long, neither the truck size nor the road condition on the island allows ground transportation.
Steel comes from a landing barge located in Navy Yard, Brooklyn. First, trucks carrying steel to the barge. Then, the barge takes 30 mins from the Brooklyn site to the Cornell Tech site. Finally, other trucks will arrive at Cornell Tech and drive off the barge onto the construction site.
“The barge needs the truck to take off the steel,” Carrol said, “also the concrete truck, they comes every other day.” That is why people could still see Trucks shuttle back and forth on the Island. “The truck takes the waste off out as well, the waste off goes to New Jersey, do whatever they can recycle.”
In general, frequency depends on the construction need. There are weeks where barging has taken place every day. “The barge comes here very varies, sometimes three times in one day and then take a day off, and then come back,” Carroll said.
Hence, the barge is used as a two-way function, brings large items to the construction site for building and takes way debris from demolition.
“In the near future, the barge will also need to carry facade and certain large equipment,” added by Winter.
The barge increased the cost of the overall project. Winter gave an estimated budget of the barges, “Couple million dollars.”
The whole process of Cornell Tech construction works well. Residents on the Island haven’t been bothered by the construction too much except the air condition concern. In order to address the air pollution problem, Cornell set air condition monitors on the construction site.
The current Main Street has some yellow tapes isolated the walkway due to the construction. Also, announcement sealed the auto-pay parking machine for limited parking on the road site. These are the only effects of the construction can be seen on the main street.
“The construction didn’t affect my life at all,” said by Virginia Granato, “I didn’t see too many trucks on the Main Street every day, probably because of the barges”
Virginia Granato, a resident has been lived on the island for more than 39 years gave her opinion on the barge, “Cornell probably has no choice, they need to face the reality on the Island,” she continued, “the barge might cost them more.”
