L. and about a dozen other folks have written to ask “what is going on with the street construction on Greenwich between Murray and Park. Us Murray Street residents would love an update.” (I can’t believe my last update was in October 2024!)

She also wrote that “it was supposed to be a three/four year project but it has already passed that time frame,” but sadly that was never the case. It was always a five-year project, but yes, it is going to be extended by about six months. (I know the problem with this for me is that it never looks any better in there — just the same mess. I have to assume that is the uneducated eye looking at the street’s substructure…)

The Department of Design and Construction just sent this new revised timeline:

• Anticipated End Date Murray to Barclay: November 2026
• Anticipated Start Date Murray to Chambers: Started October 2025
• Anticipated Project End Date Murray to Chambers: April 2027

“The additional timeline is attributable to more utility interference, specifically ConEd,” the press office said. “Some of the new delay is related to the snow as well, plus salt infiltration into the site.”

The reconstruction of Greenwich Street runs from Chambers to Barclay) and as of October 2024, the schedule was this:

• Anticipated End Date Murray to Barclay: August 2026
• Anticipated Start Date Murray to Chambers: October 2025
• Anticipated Project End Date Murray to Chambers: November 2026

The work started here in May 2022 on what was scheduled to be a five-year project. Back the DDC thought they would have Barclay to Murray paved over and restored by May 2024, but the project has been pushed back by the stew of city and non-city agencies that control what lies beneath the streets.

It all began as a Department of Transportation roadway reconstruction project, but the city decided it was time to readdress the quick fixes made after 9/11 on the watermains — some of which date back to the 1880s — enlarging the scope by about 90 percent, the DDC said. So they are doing the whole shebang: replacing the roadbed, the curbing, the watermains, and moving around all the other utilities in the roadbed, while some of them also make improvements.

“The idea is to not come back here for a century,” said Ian Michaels, the DDC’s director of public information, when we toured in 2024. “This is the most the city can do to fix a neighborhood.”

DOT wanted to keep Greenwich open to traffic for the entire project, so that complicates everything even further. “We did this project on Staten Island, and we would do a block in a week. It’s a little different here,” said Walkman Wong, the DDC’s assistant commissioner for Manhattan infrastructure and construction.

It really is a mess under there, and they have no idea what they will find until they open up the street. For instance, the steel pipe that ConEd has to replace was installed at the turn of the century — the last century. Cables from the substation are extremely high voltage and have to be turned off one by one — they are not easy to relocate (those are the large cluster of black cables coming from the south).

Gas mains — the green ones — can go anywhere — they are bendable, but water mains have to be as straight as possible. There are two water mains under Greenwich — they were built in redundancy on purpose. The Department of Environmental Protection is replacing those 20-inchers that have aged out.

And Verizon is installing a lot of empty pipes for the future – so they don’t have to redig. Those are PVC pipes buried in concrete.

I was impressed that the DDC was willing to walk the site with me back when we toured in person — but as Wong said at the time, “We love what we do and we love explaining the problems.”