Water Street Rehab is Five Years Behind Schedule; Budget Has Quintupled
The project to upgrade the Water Street corridor between Whitehall Street and Maiden Lane, which began in May 2021, was originally budgeted at $18.2 million and slated for completion in 2023. But a representative from the City’s Economic Development Corporation (EDC) acknowledged at the February 18 meeting of the Quality of Life Committee of Community Board 1 that the project is now expected to wrap up in 2027, and will cost more than $100 million.
The plan includes reconstruction that narrows and straightens Water Street, widens sidewalks, shrinks crosswalks (by incorporating pedestrian “bump outs”), and installs “bus bulbs” – a sidewalk extension into what otherwise would have been a parking lane. (This device allows buses to stay in a traffic lane when taking on or discharging passengers, which boosts transit speed by eliminating merging delays.) New pedestrian plazas will be created at Whitehall Street and Coenties Slip, along with new streetlights and traffic lights.
When the project first fell behind schedule in 2023, the completion date was extended to 2025. Last year, the project was granted a further extension to 2027. EDC community liaison Scott Payne confirmed that 1,788 days have elapsed since the first shovel went into the ground in 2021. Part of the reason for the delay is that various utilities have seized the opportunity to perform work on upgrading and expanding their subterranean infrastructure while Water Street is being excavated. This mission creep, which has included gas, steam, and electric works for Con Edison, as well as connectivity lines for Verizon, has caused the Water Street initiative’s budget to top $100 million.
Committee member Frances Curtis asked, “what are we getting out of this? What’s the big benefit after you do all of this wonderful work? Is the community getting faster service or hotter water, or what?”
Nayef Qasem, an engineer from Techno Consult, answered, “we are installing handicapped accessibility at the crosswalks, plus an audio system that signals blind people when it is safe to cross. It will be a much safer street when we are done.” He added, “we are also landscaping the two new plazas, and adding trees all along Water Street.”
When asked to explain the increased budget, Mr. Qasem explained, “there are a lot of unknowns in a project like this. We needed to make change orders that increased the City’s contribution by several million dollars. But the utilities very much underestimated how much work they would need to do. So, their portion is now going to cost about $80 million.” The good news, he said, is that the utility companies will be responsible to reimbursing the City for most of these cost overruns.