by Bradley Parsons
Staff Writer
After months of negotiations, BellSouth has begun moving hundreds of thousands of feet of communications lines from underneath the new Duval County Courthouse site. It’s a complicated process, one that City planners hope will proceed as quickly as possible to keep the project on schedule.
Courthouse construction manager Chris Boruch said the City had completed a series of alternate ducts that now await BellSouth’s lines. Boruch said BellSouth would begin relocation work in earnest next month. The City hoped BellSouth would work “expeditiously” to complete the relocation, allowing work on the Courthouse’s foundation to begin.
“We’re right where we should be in terms of the construction schedule,” said Boruch. “The only hang-up right now is that we need BellSouth to get their stuff pulled out of Clay Street. That’s a pretty big hurdle we need to clear.”
Until BellSouth clears its lines from under Clay Street, Boruch said, foundation work could proceed only underneath Pearl, Broad, Adams and Duval streets. Design work on the foundation is still underway; however, Boruch said, the City would begin a 15–foot deep excavation next month, allowing construction to hit the ground running once the plans are cemented.
The foundation work will lead to the permanent closure of Monroe Street between Broad and Julia streets and Clay and Pearl between Duval and Adams streets. Boruch said the roads would close Jan. 19.
Although the City can start foundation work almost immediately, Boruch said, the BellSouth lines would have to be removed from Clay Street for the work to continue. Clay Street runs through the project’s center.
Since the summer, the City has worked to build a new series of underground utility trenches to divert a complex tangle of utility, water and communication lines away from grounds destined for the courthouse’s foundation.
Boruch said the project had allowed the City and JEA to replace thousands of feet of decaying lines.
“The project has been worthwhile just from an infrastructure and repair standpoint,” said Boruch. “When we opened the street up it looked like a bowl of spaghetti down there.
“We were able to straighten a lot of things out down there; put in bigger pipes so that, when the area starts do develop, we’ll be able to manage the demand on those systems. Some of those pipes had been down there for 100 years probably. They were in pretty sad shape.”
According to a memorandum of understanding, the City and BellSouth both reserve the right to haggle about the cost of the relocation following the project’s completion. The City agreed to front some of the cost, while BellSouth agreed to pay to install and test the cable. Responsibility for the rest of the costs was postponed to keep the Courthouse on schedule, said Boruch.
“We’ve done our part, and now they’ll do theirs; once the phone lines are operational we’ll get down to who pays for what,” he said.