ConEd gas main work will require excavation in Gotwald Gardens, but officials say disruption will be minimal.
"It's not the end of the world," says DPW's General Foreman.
Croton residents who live along Cleveland Drive between Whelan Avenue and Benedict Boulevard, along with drivers, bikers, and walkers who frequent the area, may have taken note of a message from the village issued on July 10. It read in part:
“Con Edison has advised the Village that their contractor will be beginning a gas main project on Cleveland Drive between Whelan Avenue and Benedict Boulevard (including Gotwald Circle) beginning the week of July 14th. The work will take place Mondays through Saturdays from 8 a.m. until 6 p.m. and is expected to take four weeks for completion.”
This immediately raised the question of how much disruption there would be to what is now called Gotwald Gardens, where Croton’s Department of Public Works (DPW) recently created a median strip and traffic calming infrastructure—and where Croton’s Garden Club has done extensive landscaping and planted many shrubs and flowers. (For the Chronicle’s story on the gardens, please see this link.)
It took a little bit of questioning for the Chronicle to get specific details on what would happen there, but we now have a more complete statement from ConEd and from the village. Lawrence Dugan, ConEd’s Construction Supervisor for the project, told us this morning:
“…there will need to be 3 excavations on the median. One excavation in the newly landscaped area and the other 2 further north in the grass area. All excavations will be approx. 4’ x 4’. We will coordinate with Scott [Marsh] from [Croton DPW] to have plants moved in the landscaped area before we excavate there. These are the only excavations we can determine at this point. We will be camera inspecting the main to determine if there are other reasons we will need to excavate.”
Dugan added that the work will begin late this week or early next week.
This corresponds to what we have also been told by Village Manager Bryan Healy, who said this morning:
“As Mr. Dugan stated, we undertook a site walk and reviewed all the areas that are going to be disturbed. There is only one planted area that needs to be disturbed. There is another area in the middle of the median that is just grass and the third is at the far end near Whelan. Con Ed was going to review and see if they could put that in the street so as not to disturb the median in that location.”
Scott Marsh, DPW’s General Foreman—who supervised the creation of the median and the garden spaces—told us that he takes “great pride” in the Gotwald Gardens project and would be “very concerned” if there was any major impact there. But, he says, ConEd’s plans “sound worse than they really are.”
Marsh adds that about 20 small plants will need to be removed and then replaced, and that ConEd has agreed to replace topsoil and repair any damage to the median strip.
“It’s not the end of the world,” Marsh says.
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