by Kent Jennings Brockwell
Staff Writer
As the bricks are laid one-by-one and the concrete is poured for the Bay Street Town Center project, one man watches over the construction.
Lathe White is a project administrator and superintendent for Onas Corporation, the company contracted by the City for the Bay Street project, and is the project’s foreman.
Besides being the chief overseer for the project, White has become a liaison between his construction crew and the tenants of the buildings that have temporarily lost their sidewalk.
“It has been enjoyable meeting the tenants of the three blocks we are working on, said White. “I like to meet with them and discuss their concerns. I try to help them however I can.”
One of the major concerns and complaints from the project is parking, he said.
“I do what I can to help because I am very sensitive to the fact that we are taking away three blocks of parking,” he said. “It’s construction. You have to shut down one lane for construction and take out the parking meters and the downtown area is really limited with parking as it is.”
While parking has been troublesome, White said the City’s Parking Division has been helpful with the project. He also tries to help downtown drivers as much as he can.
“If I see somebody with a handicapped sticker, I will wave them over and tell them that they can park there temporarily,” he said. “I do whatever I can do to help the public or anybody in this area.”
Parking concerns aside, White said he has been bending over backwards to help tenants with their inconveniences in the construction area. For example, he personally helped build individual walkways from the street to each business in the 300 block of East Bay Street.
White was hired by the Onas Corporation in August specifically for this project, he said, though he has been involved in construction all of his adult life.
I like construction because you can see your accomplishments,” he said. “It’s nice to see what can be accomplished when you have an end result in front of you.”
The Jacksonville native’s construction career began when he was in high school where White worked after school and during the summers as a laborer for a house builder. After high school, he completed some college and continued in the trade, but later moved into the sales side of construction. Over the years, White has been involved in most sides of the construction trade.
Naturally outgoing, White is glad to be back on the street side of construction because it allows him to work with those his projects impact.
“I like that I am out here on the street and meeting people,” he said. “I run into people that I grew up with, and lo and behold, they work in the building next door.”
Besides typical construction complaints, White said the main problem he has run into has been the weather.
“Considering the four named hurricanes, numerous tropical storms and typical Florida summer weather, we are doing pretty good on the project time-wise,” he said.
Thanks to better weather and some extra hours spent on the project, White said the Bay Street project is back on track, but it hasn’t been easy.
“It has been a pain to batten down the hatches for the hurricanes and then have to come back and see what damage the hurricanes had done and then have to clean up the site and get it back together again,” he said, adding no major damage occurred to the site from the storms.
“We are back on track and I hope that we don’t have any more storms come our way,” he said.
Besides the weather, the physical history of Jacksonville has been the only other delay with the project. Because the city was founded in the 1800s, White said Jacksonville has several layers of different streets and foundations beneath its current surface.
“There were a lot of unforeseen things under the ground and we had to deal with a lot of those specific things which took a lot of time,” he said. “It was concrete on top of concrete and then the brick pavers from the old street and the old trolley. This city was built on top of everything just like other cities. It is just layer on top of layer, so we ran into some unplatted pipes and unplatted materials and that really held us up.”
White said crews made another historical find during construction on the first block of the project on East Bay Street between Ocean and Newnan streets. While digging, work crews found evidence of the Great Fire of 1901.
“One of the interesting things was to see the actual line the fire of 1901 created,” he said. “You can see where the 1901 fire was. Everything burnt down and everything was leveled and you now have a charred line in the soil.”
When complete, the Bay Street project will widen sidewalks to 18 feet, but will offer the same parking as before, though there could be an additional space or two.
“It will give more foot traffic room and will also give the tenants more room to go out on the sidewalks with tables and umbrellas if the City allows them to,” he said.