Late Friday night, the sound of a concrete saw cutting pavement outside of the Goldbelt Hotel infuriated guests and employees alike. By Saturday night, the grinding of the saw was inciting 911 calls and citrus attacks.
“We had a little old lady with a bag of oranges who went out and threw them at the contractors because she felt she had nothing else she could do,” Goldbelt General Manager Aimon Indoung told the Empire on Wednesday morning.
The construction project that pushed Agent Orange to take on a group of contractors with a bag of fruit only began on Friday, but it’s already inspired quite the uproar.
Between now and Sept. 30, contractors working for the city will be working nightly to replace water mains running along and beneath the stretch of Egan Drive that runs from Main Street to the Douglas Bridge. The city is trying to replace aging infrastructure before the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities resurfaces and reconfigures this section of Juneau’s busiest road.
“When we get the chance, we want to replace aging infrastructure before new construction,” said Roger Healy, director of the city’s Engineering and Public Works Department. The water lines running under Egan Drive are between 50 and 60 years old.
The ongoing debate about the project isn’t revolving around whether the construction needs to happen. People, including more than just guests of the Goldbelt, are unhappy about the timing.
“Nobody is arguing that the work doesn’t need to be done; it just needs to be done at a more appropriate time,” said Phil Bennett, a resident of the Parkshore Condos and a member of condo association’s board.
Nine of Parkshore’s 15 total buildings sit right off of Egan Drive, Bennett said, which means that she has “a number of upset neighbors” who have been disturbed by the late-night construction.
That’s why Bennett and the rest of the Parkshore Board of Directors — along with Indoung, the Goldbelt and several other nearby hotels — signed a letter to city officials. They requested the project to adhere to the city’s noise ordinance, which prohibits loud noise after 10 p.m. unless it is at a reasonable level with minimum impacts.
The contractors working on the project are currently permitted to work from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. Healy said that although the contractors are “trying to be very accommodating to the neighbors,” the city chose have them work at night to avoid impacting traffic during the day.
“We were balancing a traffic delay during the day time with a noise impact in the night time,” he said. “Certainly, if I was trying to get some sleep and a concrete saw was buzzing outside my window, I’d be a little upset myself.”
As far as Dana Ruaro is concerned, one of the main problems with the construction was that the city gave little to no notice. Ruaro is the director of sales for the Goldbelt and Baranof hotels, and she said that if the hotel had been able to warn guests of the construction noise, people wouldn’t have been so unhappy.
“Our main problem is that nobody came to us and told us that this was going to be happening, and we didn’t find out until 9 o’clock on a Friday night once the construction had already started,” she said.
For that, Healy apologized. He said the city has been working to provide the impacted hotels, which also include the Prospector and the Juneau Hotel, with daily construction updates, including any water shutoff notices.
Ultimately, however, Healy believes that working during the day would negatively impact more of Juneau’s visitors. Eventually, he said, the construction crews will need to shut down multiple lanes of traffic, which would cause delays for cruise passengers on excursions and anybody else trying to get into or out of downtown.
The way Healy sees it, large construction projects in the heart of the city are always somewhat controversial.
“If we had large traffic delays we’d be hearing from people as well,” he said.
• Contact reporter Sam DeGrave at 523-2279 or sam.degrave@juneauempire.com.
