Along with spring's arrival comes the start of construction season and with it, resuming work on Lancaster Central Market's streetscape project.
The latest phase of the $2 million-plus project involves replacing hexagonal concrete pavers along North Market Street between West King and North Grant streets with brick. Access to market is closed along that side and Grant is fenced off.
Charlotte Katzenmoyer, city public works director, said the work on this phase should take about seven weeks. The entire project is expected to be completed by the end of the summer.
Since last spring, new bricks have been put in along Market between Grant and West Orange streets, Grant between Prince and Market and on Penn Way, along the market's eastern side. Next after the current phase will be repaving William Henry Place, along market's southern side.
The pavers the bricks are replacing were installed in the 1970s and weren't meant to handle the weight of automotive traffic.
When complete, the project will feature poetry path in the Heritage Quadrant — the area around the market and in front of the Lancaster City Visitor Center. Barbara Buckman Strasko’s poem, "Bricks and Mortar," an ode to the late Lancaster artist David Brumbach, will be engraved in granite. The winding path will be designed to resemble the Conestoga River in an aerial view of the city.
Other features include green infrastructure improvements, including a rainwater cistern; embedded lights in the sidewalk around market and in Penn Square near the Griest Building; black metal bollards to replace wooden ones and black wrought-iron benches to be placed around market.
Work on the project was expected to begin the summer of 2011. But work was delayed, in part, because walls of an underground vault for the Griest Building that house its electrical and mechanical equipment had deteriorated and needed to be repaired.
The city got more than $2 million in funding for the project through federal and state grants and local donations and is also using capital budget funds.