Builders Struggle To Keep Big NK Projects On Course

What has this year's unusually cold and snowy winter meant for folks who have to work outside all day with their hands and icy machines?

"The concrete plants are not running: they are not making concrete," said Robert Cioe, owner of Wickford Junction Plaza, as he explained some of the impacts extreme low temperatures have had on the new station rising at his shopping center.

Even if he did have concrete ready to pour, Cioe said, the steel rebar already in place is very cold. "If you place warm concrete next to cold rebar, the steel will snap."

With the ground and existing mounds of dirt frozen and under snow, train station workers had little to do until recently.

"They started removing snow last week," Cioe reported. "Quite a bit of the foundation has been dug, so we will be putting in propane heaters to thaw it out." He said that he expects Manafort Brothers, the construction company,  to begin pouring concrete again in mid-February.

Will this weather ultimately delay the station opening, planned for early next year? "We still think we can open sometime in the first quarter of 2012," Cioe said.

Two other local projects, which were further along in construction when snow started falling in December, expect to open with shorter delays.

Jan Hall-Stinson, program manager for Crossroads Rhode Island and its 104-unit , originally hoped to welcome 24 families into new homes on Navy Drive February 1. She now expects to move in the first 18 families March 1. Six more families will follow in April.

"As you can imagine, work was slowed a little because of the snow," she said. But aside from weather delays, builders have met the schedule. Now, she reported, getting the utilities connected and working is the final step for the first buildings.

The on Gate Road across from the Shops at Quonset Point also is nearing completion. Its original March 1 debut has slipped a month, but Project Manager Robert E. Shapiro said he expects the hotel to open for business in early April. He said he continues to get inquiries about when the first guests can check in. "People seem to be very excited," he said.

The 52-foot-tall that Mill Creek Marine is building at Allen Harbor endured weather delays. When construction began in September, owner Jim Shriner hoped to have it completed by December. On a recent February morning, Shriner said he was in the process of moving his service and supply business into one wing of the new facility. But, the tall warehousing section still had a dirt floor. 

While weather has slowed the building's progress, Shriner said he was grateful that despite the brutal cold, dredgers had finished work on his 180-foot shoreline. "The Army Corps of Engineers said that the dredging had to be finished by Jan. 31, and it was," he said. He now projects a March completion for the project.

Finally, if it looks like nothing much has been happening on the   that broke ground on Quonset Point late last summer. That's by design, not due to the weather delays.

"Quonset Development Corporation contracts call for a three-month suspension of work during the winter," reported QDC spokesman Rhoades Alderson. Expect to see trucks and bulldozers back in operation on the Quonset projects in the spring.