Harlem River Baseball

The Fates, for reasons known only to themselves but probably for entertainment purposes, saw fit to have me assigned to two separate projects right next to each other -- with virtually the same name. But it gets even better. The Harlem River Basketball site, introduced in a previous post, was originally supposed to be a baseball field. It was switched at the insistence of the community to a redesign of the existing facilities, ie basketball and handball. About the time this switch happened, we got funding to redo the baseball/football/soccer fields right next door. The contract numbers for these two projects, used for internal site ID, are just one number off. So, I am constantly explaining the difference between the HR Basketball and HR Ballfield sites, even multiple times to the same person. The bureaucracy is not well-equipped to handle such confusion. Laugh it up, Fates.

Anyway, so there's a ballfield on the other side of the 3rd Avenue Bridge from the HR Basketball site. Presently, there are two baseball diamonds with a lot of space in between, which is often used for soccer and occasionally football. The field surface is natural grass, theoretically, although it gets used so heavily that by the end of the season the grass often starts looking quite dodgy. Last year there wasn't even any grass left by the end.

















panoramic view of one of the diamonds








On one side of the field is a mammoth 60's-era concrete and brick bleacher. The parts that remain are often used as beds, or bathrooms. Not very pleasant. There was no opposition to the idea of removing this. See that little black door in the lower right corner? Yes, it's a door. What's inside?
















Electrical components, that's what! All the controls for the 100' high sports lighting poles are in here. So, I'll be demolishing most of this structure, leaving all the controls intact, then building a new, smaller structure around the controls. Tricky. By the way, it was really creepy in there. Spiders and egg sacs all over the place. We did not linger.
















Here's what I proposed for the site. The grass will be replaced with synthetic turf, a new kind that feels quite a lot like real grass. It's much, much tougher however. The synthetic turf was not my idea, it came from above. At first I was skeptical, but I think in this situation it makes much better sense than natural grass. The fences and bleachers will be replaced with more suitable components, and I'll green up the perimeter with various plantings.


















A perspective view... in this shot you can see the Harlem River Drive beyond the field, then the Harlem River, and the Bronx on the other side. Note: all the cars in this picture are '69 Camaros.
















View from home plate... it was tricky to figure out how to have striping for two baseball diamonds, full-size football, and full-size soccer, all on the same field without being confusing. I hope this strategy works. I've set it up so that (in theory) you could play a casual game with the striping that's there, or for a serious game, use the tick marks to stripe it with chalk so you don't have to measure it out.
















Construction began on this job September 11, so construction photos will be coming soon!

369th ribboncutting! The end!

This is it for the 369th! Today was the ribboncutting ceremony (actually more of an unveiling, no ribbons were physically cut). Quite a few people showed up, around 150 maybe. Various elected officials vied with each other to take credit for the project. Parks Commissioner Benepe was there to run the show. Overall it was a good end to an intense but interesting project. The vets seemed very happy, which is really the most important thing in the end.

Some photos from the ceremony...
















left, Eddie the GC; middle, Joe, main subcontractor; right, some weirdo.




























the two towers... you can see the empire state way down 5th ave.



























color guard ceremony... included french colors with la marseilles played

























parks commissioner benepe speaking. he does a pretty good job.

























French consul-general Francois Delattre speaking. He was also quite good, eloquently expressed gratitude to the US and the 369th for their service to his country.






















the local news cameras were rolling.




























Nicholas was more interested in the 5th Ave pavement. But how many 11-month olds do you know that have sat down to play in the middle of 5th Ave?



























So that's it.. yet another new place in NYC has been created for use by its denizens. I hope they enjoy it!

hr basketball has begun

The first step is removals. They'll spend the next couple of weeks tearing everything out except the handball wall and a few trees.

Harlem River Basketball

I have two projects right next to each other that both start construction on September 11. These are both for Parks.

The first is the Harlem River Basketball Courts, an interesting space that borders the Harlem River Drive (a major Manhattan highway) and the 3rd Avenue bridge (between Manhattan and the Bronx). It's mostly surrounded by an offramp linking the bridge to the highway.

















Here are some pictures of the existing situation... total budget $1m.


panoramic








the courts are not in very good shape...













...although people still use them anyway.















the rest of the site is not looking so hot either.












Here is my plan. It's reorganized to better accommodate large full courts, and the perimeter is substantially greened-up. Other site stuff (furniture, fences, etc) will of course be new -- including some new bleachers for watching tournaments.












next time: the baseball/soccer/football field next door

369th monument is in!

The monument itself has at last been installed, after sitting in France for several years and sitting in the Armory basement for several more. Here's how it went...

The monument was in four pieces, and had to be hauled out of the basement by forklift (the 369th allowed us to use their classic old lift).

































Once outside, a crane truck lifted each piece carefully and set it on the truck bed.

































The pieces were then trucked to the site and verrrry slowly offloaded, then stacked up like the towers of blocks that my daughter makes. There's a special kind of grout in between each piece to encourage them to stick together, and sealant between each piece to keep the water out.
















And that's it! It'll remain covered until the grand unveiling this fall. Now we just have to finish the rest of the site -- but the trickiest part is over.

369th concrete base in

Concrete bases for the pavement and curbs are now in. Also the foundation for the monument has been poured... you can only see the top part of it here, with the stainless steel dowels poking out, but underneath is a 5' cube of concrete and rebar.

Very good concrete work here, the contractor is doing a fine job so far. Nice crisp edges for the most part, and good finishes, especially considering nobody will ever see this once the granite pavement is on top. Apparently his laborers used to work on building apartment buildings, so they know a lot about concrete.




With the base in, you can start to get a more concrete idea (ha!) of how the axis will line up with the armory.

































They've also got the forms ready for the colored concrete curb and the steel-faced curb on the perimeter. Next up: installing the monument! We have to do that next so we don't tear up the finished site in the installation process.

mcnair is coming right along

We started construction on McNair Park last fall. Here are a few highlights to date.

The soil quality was really bad onsite. Apparently the building that was there previously was torn down and mostly left under a thin cover of soil. We can't trust that kind of subgrade to hold up our new park, so we had to replace quite a lot of soil and also do other trickery to keep it from collapsing.




















We dug a deep trench to see how bad the soil really was... along the way we uncovered part of a brick wall or foundation, or something. We also found lots of other interesting things, like a large boiler (we think), and many other interesting and unidentifiable objects.




















After the soil was stabilized, the first element to be constructed were the perimeter curbs and utilities. One challenge we encountered with this process involved a neighbor, who dug an illegal basement right up next to our property line. We had to bump out the curb around it to compensate.















After a long time, the curbs and pavements finally started coming together, and the structure of the site started to be revealed. In the foreground here is our resident engineer Charles Tesler, basically our liasion with the contractor. He's onsite frequently to make sure things are going as they should.















Things started looking really nice once the plants were mostly installed. This building here with the graffitti on it used to be a live chicken store. Very stinky. Since we started working on the park they cleaned it all up and are apparently turning it into apartments. If I had some capital, I could probably make a killing on properties next to parks that are about to be reconstructed.















We were able to get on the roof of a neighboring building and get some shots of the progress. This is the south side, with the concrete wall in place where the lawn will go.















This is the center of the site, with the spray shower area showing. It'll be one of the last major pieces to go in.















And the north end, where the play equipment will be. The holes are all precisely placed (or are supposed to be) so the play equipment can drop right in when it comes.















We started installing the play equipment a few weeks ago. Here you can see Nancy doublechecking the contractor's placement of the play pieces. They have to be precisely placed according to safety standards, so if some kid goes flying off he won't hit anything hard. The piece she's checking on here is called the Spica. It spins quickly, with speed dependent on whether the user is leaning into or away from the piece. I tried it and almost lost my lunch.















The big units are in! They fit well, as far as I can tell.
















Another important piece of play equipment -- the moon phase climber. From the outside, you see the moons as you would from a long distance from earth, with all the light hemispheres facing one direction (toward the sun)...















... and from the inside, you see what effect that has as viewed from earth: the phases of the moon. And then you can climb on it too.















That gets us caught up to the present. Presently the contractor is fixing up site furnishings, like lamp posts, and we hope to have that spray shower in soon. Stay tuned!

369th just underway

Here are some photos from a week ago... they are making good progress. The tree has been transplanted and appears to have survived the move (it was a little iffy for awhile, we were late in the season). In these photos you can see contractor Eddie's crew have set up the concrete forms for the foundations.

The layout and elevation of these forms has to be precise, or the whole thing will be messed up. After they set it all up I personally doublechecked the measurements and elevations -- not much room for error here. They had everything right on the money, which was great. Eddie (from Moscow) confided in me, "With Russians, everything exact right place."
















a closeup of the form they are using for the granite curb foundation. you can see the middle piece there with the yellow string on it -- the piece is removable, they move it down the line to check for correct width and elevation.
















the view from above... notice the tree on the left has moved from its original location.

the silver truck there is Eddie's entire construction fleet. He's just starting out, this is his first project as his own company. so far so good! but we have a long way to go.

369th plan

After a lot of wrangling, the final plan for the 369th Infantry Memorial is pretty simple.

The monument sits slightly south-of-center, with a path leading to it that aligns axially with the armory across the street. The path will be made of a dark gray textured granite, as will the curbs.

There will be two small benches on either side of the monument, as requested by the Art Commission (and not shown on this plan).

Surrounding the hardware on all sides is a bed of Euonymus fortunei, a low-growing groundcover that turns purpleish in the winter. A few bollards will be placed at strategic points to prevent those crazy livery drivers from hitting the monument when they jump the curb (and I do mean when, not if).

The trees are the existing Sophora japonica that you can see in the previous post's pictures. One of them was transplanted to make the composition more symmetrical, and they were both limbed up to provide more visibility for the monument.

So that's it. Here are some other images shown to the Art Commission:


Exisiting conditions photo (top) and proposed plan sketch (bottom).


Below: some of the proposed materials.