Poor Warren Street. There are new buildings under construction (12 Warren), wrapping up demolition (30 Warren), about to start demolition (59-61 Warren), and on the horizon (79-81 Warren and 86 Warren). And now the New York City Department of Design and Construction has served notice that in February it’s starting a 2.5-year reconstruction of the non–Battery Park City part of the street, from Broadway to West. Assuming equal time for all four blocks, that’s around eight months per block.

The flyer posted in my lobby explains that—as with the Chambers, Hudson, Broadway, and Worth Street reconstructions (the latter of which is pictured in this post)—the installation of new water mains will be used as an opportunity to upgrade other below-ground utilities. “Construction hours are Monday through Friday: 7 a.m. to 6 p.m., with limited noise before 8 a.m. Some weekend work. Some overnight work with limited noise operations only.” The DDC plans to maintain a lane of traffic the entire time, but there’s no mention of whether buses will be rerouted. Also, as with every preceding project, we can expect a lot of digging in the cross streets, which means Broadway, Church, W. Broadway, and Greenwich will get gummed up.

I’ll try to find out whether the crew will start from the west or the east. [UPDATE: “Although the official work schedule has not yet been submitted, the work is tentatively due to start on West Street and continue towards Broadway,” says the DDC community liaison rep.] Usually, these projects get run by Community Board 1, but if that happened I missed it. For the Chambers Street reconstruction, CB1 requested that the DDC focus on the area near P.S. 234 in the summer, when kids are out east.

And then the horror moves downtown: “Once this work is completed, construction is scheduled to begin on John Street, from Broadway to William.”