by Bradley Parsons
Staff Writer
Downtown commuters may want to avoid Hemming Plaza in July and August as the City tears up one-block segments of street to move thousands of feet of utility pipes, electrical wiring and fiber optic lines.
Duval County Courthouse project director Chris Boruch said the project’s first phase would require City-hired contractors to rip open Clay Street to remove a network of underground cables and wiring from a trench fringing the front of the new courthouse site. Under the street, privately-owned fiber optics weave through JEA utility lines, blocking the construction of the proposed courthouse’s foundation.
The City will reroute those lines to a series of trenches to be built under Duval, Broad and West Adams streets. Boruch said the project would separate communications and electrical lines from water lines to prevent a short caused by leak or rupture.
Once work begins, Boruch said the City will close one-block segments of the affected streets for one or two weeks. Traffic will be detoured. Boruch said the project would likely begin in July and last at least through the summer. “We want to begin as soon as we can to get it over as soon as we can,” said Boruch. “We have got to do this stuff before we can really start work on the courthouse foundation.”
Boruch said the West Adams Street and Broad Street construction would likely cause the most rush hour problems. Adams runs one way, emptying onto Interstate 95; Broad Street leads south to Riverside Avenue and the Acosta Bridge.
The City notified the private utility firms — Epic Communications; Comcast; BellSouth; Espire and MCI Worldcom — that they would be proportionally charged the project’s unknown cost. Only BellSouth balked, leading to negotiations with City attorneys.