The Veterans Building across the street from my living room window, at McAllister and Franklin Streets, has turned into a retrofitting construction site over the last year...
...and the scale of the work grows baroquely larger with each passing week.
There are two large dumpsters near Franklin Street filled with running liquid, which I prefer to think of as a water feature, rather like an oversized fountain in Las Vegas.
The water seems to have something to do with a very large hole that is being dug around the foundation. The site is a constantly changing spectacle.
The hole around the foundation edges appears like they are putting the building on base isolators ("shock absorbers") like they did City Hall. That is hugely expensive. I wonder who is funding this and with what pot of money--I don't recall a bond issue to cover it.
ReplyDeleteThat said, this is a grand building and was neglected when they retrofitted both City Hall and the Opera House in the wake of 1989. I'm glad it's getting some love now.
Dear BTinSF: Thanks for the info about the base isolators. As for the pot of money, I vaguely remember the Mayor and the Board of Supervisors doing an end-run around a bond issue to finance it.
ReplyDelete