Worcester Approves $583M City Square

It is the "turtle love boy" he is" riding the turtle? I do not know, it is a very popular statue because of its awkward appearance. The turtles face is priceless. It is art, take it how you want to. I am just surprised that the city of Worcester would pick this sculpture.

Here (different angles):

IMG_0968.jpg

IMG_0963.jpg
 
Corey said:
Thanks for the photographic update, AdamBC. Keep us updated if you find yourself in Worcester again.
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Had about 30 min of downtime in Worcester - so I also swung by Georges to get two dogs with the works. Quite tasty.

Thanks for the wiki article found5dollar - it's why I made a point to swing by the fountain and snap a shot.
 
AdamBC said:
Had about 30 min of downtime in Worcester - so I also swung by Georges to get two dogs with the works. Quite tasty.

Thanks for the wiki article found5dollar - it's why I made a point to swing by the fountain and snap a shot.
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you are quite welcome.
 
OK, got it. Yeah those are some good dogs, cheap, good, meal. just how I think most food places should be, not enough.

Another good food place near by in Shrewsbury is Taco Acopolcos on Route 9, driving East it is on your right before the new Price Chopper. Cheap, authentic, good, Mexican food.
 
Does anyone know if Holy Cross plans on renovating the Hart Center? I wouldnt be surprised if they fix it up in the next few years. A great place to see a college basketball game when it is sold out.
 
I thought HC was a very attractive campus when I took my younger sister there a few years ago. My uncle played basket ball there, and if I am not mistaken is one of the, if not the, all time highest scorers. Played against Dr. J. and outscored him. Good basket ball tradition there. Would be nice to have the arena renovated.
 
Patrick, the Hart Center is a great small venue to see game, but walking around it you get the feeling it hasnt been renovated since it was built back in 1975. Your Uncle sounds like quite the athlete.
 
awesome... i'll be in worcester this weekend for StArt on the Street...

I'm going to have to up date the wikipedia page with all the new goings on at the mall...
 
I was all over worcester yesterday, but of couse, i forgot my camera... sorry guys.
 
Construction on the Unum building has begun while demolition continues.

This article has a good summary of what has happened so far, but talks alot about recycling.

http://www.telegram.com/article/20110904/NEWS/109049847
Worcester Telegram and Gazette

Something old, something new
CITYSQUARE
RECYCLING PART OF THE WORK ON CITYSQUARE

By Priyanka Dayal TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF

WORCESTER — Most of the sprawling parking garage is gone, but parts of it will live on.

The steel beams that once held up the Foster Street garage, part of CitySquare, may become new cars that one day drive the streets of Worcester. They may become soup cans. Or new beams for a new structure.

So far, the demolition of the long-defunct Worcester Common Outlets mall has brought down 4,000 tons — or 8 million pounds — of steel. All of it will be recycled.

The recycling and dumping of building materials like steel is just one of many pieces that make up the CitySquare redevelopment project, a massive demolition and construction effort taking place in the heart of New England's second-largest city.

This is the biggest demolition project Leggat McCall Properties LLC has ever handled — in size, not dollars — said Donald W. Birch, chief operating officer of Boston-based Leggat McCall, developer of the project.

Leggat McCall and Consigli Construction Co. of Milford are partway through a $110 million job that includes tearing down something old, building something new and doing it without disrupting people or traffic.

Since demolition began months ago, workers have hacked away parts of the vacant mall and demolished more than two-thirds of the parking garage that divides Union Station and City Hall. In recent days, they started laying the foundation for the new glass office building that will house disability insurer Unum Group.

As workers cut into the parking garage — reducing its capacity from 3,200 cars to 860 — piles of debris climbed higher and higher.

Most of that debris will never see a landfill or an incinerator. It will be recycled and reused.

Behind the jersey barriers and fence that line Foster Street, steel, concrete and brick have been separated into several piles.

“One of the challenges with this job is making sure we can segregate these materials,” Mr. Birch said during a recent tour of the site.

Hefty steel beams, once the skeleton of the garage, now lie in heaps on the ground. Smaller pieces of steel rebar are in separate pile. Periodically, the metal is trucked to Schnitzer Steel's recycling facilities in Worcester, Everett or Attleboro.

Used steel like this is melted into uniform sheets and shipped to manufacturers, said William Turley, executive director of the Construction Materials Recycling Association in Eola, Ill.

The beams from the downtown parking garage “could be your next car, or the next I-beam, or it could be anything,” he said.

Gregory L. Crawford, executive director of the Steel Recycling Institute in Pittsburgh, said in an email that recycling steel makes financial sense.

“Recycling has always been a business proposition,” he said. “It was proven much cheaper than drawing all the new materials out of nature.”

Recycling of construction materials is also required in Massachusetts. The Department of Environmental Protection's list of materials banned from landfills and incinerators includes asphalt, brick, concrete and metals.

The concrete that used to be the Foster Street parking garage weighs 80,000 tons, according to Mr. Birch. It could fill 1,500 dump trucks. But this concrete won't be trucked anywhere.

In the spring, workers will set up a crushing plant next to the mountain of concrete now on the property. The crusher will reduce concrete chunks into more uniform pieces, about 3 inches in size.

“Instead of having to truck new material in, we're reusing this material,” Mr. Birch said.

The recycled bits of concrete will become the base for new roads that will be built as part of the CitySquare redevelopment. Front Street will be extended so it links City Hall to Washington Square. And the main promenade of the old mall will become a new road — Mercantile Street.

Workers have been reshaping the city center since a division of Worcester-based Hanover Insurance Group Inc. bought about half of the 21-acre CitySquare property from Berkeley Investments Inc. for $5 million last year. Hanover's decision to fund the redevelopment of CitySquare revived a project that had been stalled since Berkeley purchased the property and first proposed demolishing the failed mall in 2004.

Unum was the first tenant that agreed to be part of the new CitySquare. The insurer plans to move from an older facility to a new building in CitySquare, across from St. Vincent Hospital. Unum's new location is being constructed for about $70 million, the bulk of the $110 million cost of the initial phase of CitySquare redevelopment.

St. Vincent Hospital has committed to CitySquare with plans to build a cancer treatment center there for about $23 million. The state is also playing a role, pledging more than $11 million for infrastructure improvements.

For now, those managing the project are tight-lipped about other tenants, except to say that they're talking to several people and exploring various possibilities.

For now, the focus is on the job at hand. About 100 workers in hard hats are using excavators, dump trucks and cranes to get rid of the old and build the new.

On a recent morning, workers used a hydraulic hammer to break up concrete footing in the ground — the concrete that used to support the columns that held up the parking garage.

An excavator collected the chunks of concrete and loaded them onto a dump truck. The truck deposited the concrete into a pile. Later, a pulverizer — shaped like a lobster claw — would crunch the concrete into smaller pieces and pluck steel remnants from those chunks. The steel bars would go to the steel pile. The concrete would go to the big concrete pile.

The concrete pile soars 30 feet above the ground; Mr. Birch said it will continue to rise.

Around the corner from the demolition area, workers are laying the foundation for Unum's eight-story building, which is scheduled to be complete by fall 2012.

Overlooking the Unum property is the old outlet mall. It's mostly empty. Mostly — but not completely.

Remnants from the past still hang on the walls: above one room, a sign advertising Levi's jeans; in another room, fliers promoting a store-closing sale.

A stray shopping cart and a nearly-naked mannequin lie in the room that used to be a shoe store.

The main atrium of the mall is surprisingly neat — one portion still has carpet. But elsewhere, curls of steel and crushed concrete lie in little heaps.

Underground and out of view, a tunnel spans the length of the mall's main promenade. This is where trucks once delivered loads to retailers, and where trucks will make deliveries to new CitySquare tenants. For now, the tunnel is used by construction vehicles. It also holds the pipes and wires of CitySquare's mechanical, electrical and life-safety systems.

Workers had to untangle and reroute all these systems to “sever the relationship with the part that was coming down,” Mr. Birch said. At the same time, they worked to make sure employees in neighboring buildings, which are owned by Berkeley Investments, were not disrupted.

“It isn't often that we have the opportunity to work on (a project) that will have such a significant impact on a community,” Matthew Consigli, vice president of Consigli Construction, said in an email. “We are fortunate to play a role in this project because we understand what it means to the Worcester area.”

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Cancer center broke ground a few days ago.... it is now three stories instead of two.

http://www.telegram.com/article/20111014/NEWS/111019761
WORCESTER — St. Vincent Hospital broke ground this morning for a new cancer treatment center, signaling the start of a $23 million project that will help reshape downtown Worcester as part of the new CitySquare.

The three-story building, to be constructed on ground that used to hold part of a sprawling downtown parking garage, will include all of St. Vincent's cancer treatment services. Currently, cancer treatment is split between the hospital's main campus on Summer Street, and an older facility in Vernon Hill.

“We will have state-of-the-art cancer care here, better than we have ever had in Worcester,” St. Vincent Hospital President and Chief Executive Erik G. Wexler said at a groundbreaking ceremony this morning.

Dr. Thomas Mullins, president of the hospital's medical staff, said because the new facility will house all cancer treatment services under one roof, staff will be able to communicate better.

“It means everybody can actually talk to one another,” Dr. Mullins said. “That communication is actually key to delivering good health care.”

St. Vincent signed an agreement earlier this year with CitySquare II Development Co. LLC to acquire land on Foster Street and build a cancer center there. Initially, the plans called for a two-story, 40,000-square-foot building. Over the summer, St. Vincent revised its plans to include a third floor, bringing the square footage to more than 65,000.

The third floor will house retail services related to wellness for the community, according to Mr. Wexler.

The building is scheduled for a January 2013 opening. St. Vincent is receiving tax breaks from the city to build in CitySquare.

The CitySquare development project, stalled for many years, was revived in 2010 when an arm of The Hanover Insurance Group Inc. bought 11 acres of property downtown and took control of the project.
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i cant find any images of the new 3-story renderings, but you can find a few in the NECN news clip here
http://www.necn.com/10/14/11/St-Vin...anding_health.html?blockID=577654&feedID=4210
 
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