Lift station work keeps residents on edge

When Luke Wood Park was selected as the site for a new lift station in 2008, residents of the nearby Central Park condominiums expressed worries about how the project might impact their homes.

Six years, two engineering firms, several design changes and millions in additional costs later — with the project still 20 months from completion — they believe those concerns were justified.

The latest update from McKim and Creed, the engineering firm that assumed control of the Lift Station 87 project last year, is that an above-ground building will have to be constructed as part of the project. Initial conceptual renderings showed a building roughly 34 feet tall, though those are still subject to change.

The plan is a significant departure from the initial design, which was to be almost entirely underground and masked by landscaping. At a May 5 City Commission meeting, the engineers said the new design is necessary for the lift station to withstand a Category 3 hurricane.

As the project design has evolved, residents near Luke Wood Park have watched as the construction zone became all but an abandoned worksite. When work initially began on Lift Station 87, Central Park II President Jim Carroll said residents had to deal with the typical headaches associated with a nearby construction project: noise, debris and an unpleasant view out the windows overlooking the park.

The residents were patient with the project initially, Carroll said, because they believed it would be over with soon enough.

“I live on the north side of Building 7, which faces the park,” Carroll said. “We’ve put up with dust, debris, noise and negative landscape views in the hopes that the lift station would be finished this year.”

Now, however, the projected project completion date is January 2016. Much of the planned work on constructing Lift Station 87 is complete underground in Luke Wood Park, untouched since the first engineering team was fired in 2012. Even the undisturbed project site posed its own problems, however.

Last summer, residents grappled with the city after planned landscaping improvements in the park were repeatedly pushed back.

“The total lack of respect shown to the residents is unbelievable,” Central Park resident Pauline Kingsbury wrote in a letter to city staff that summer. “All we asked for was to have this site restored to good order whilst the city gets its act together and gets this whole project finished.”

The new above-ground design — and with it, the demolition of much of the completed work — is just the latest in a string of errors on the city’s behalf, Central Park II resident David Coe said. As recently as the week of the May 5 commission meeting, residents say they were assured that any above-ground structure would be minor in scope. The residents are happy to see a more resilient building in place, but say it underscores a significant problem with the initial plan — and the initial site selection.

“It seemed like putting it on a site east of the trail would be a better way,” Carroll said. “I think that would minimize the problems at hand now and the potential problem of hurricanes down the road.”

The city chose Luke Wood Park as the optimal site for the project before it accounted for a potential hurricane and before an above-ground structure was deemed necessary. In light of new information — and with remaining expenses projected at more than the original project budget — residents hope to see the city consider different locations.

“They’re saying we have to redo the whole thing,” Coe said. “I think this is the last opportunity for them to say, ‘Let’s stop now and start to look at an alternative.’”

Project staff said they have had to deal with decisions made by previous commissions and previous engineering firms, and that the path they’re taking is the most prudent, considering the circumstances. At a project update meeting Monday, city employees reiterated their belief that the current site is the optimal one.

“There was significant work done over a multiple-year period going through a site-selection process,” city Project Manager Steve Topovski said. “This was the location selected for the lift station, and everything we’re doing is related to constructing this at this location.”

With all that’s gone wrong with the project to date, Central Park residents are increasingly worried about how the final product will function. Even if it’s ultimately successful, though, they believe the work has been plagued with missteps that could have been avoided.

“In view of what’s happened, it’s really brought home that the commissioners, they’re not on my short list of greatest managers,” Carroll said.

Contact David Conway at [email protected]