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8.16.04 Months of work lost to 'bad luck' When it comes to construction projects, the things that can go wrong are limited only by the imagination. Excavation crews dig up everything from parts of streetcars to abandoned pipes. Equipment breaks down. Holes fill up with groundwater. The list goes on. On Omaha's downtown Dodge Street project, just about everything that could go wrong has. Dodge opened eight days ago after being closed from 13th Street to 15th Street since July 1, 2002. Also closed for some of that time was the block of Dodge from 13th Street to 12th Street. The street work was necessary during construction of a city garage at 13th and Dodge and a tunnel connecting the garage with the new Union Pacific building. The project is being done by Lund-Ross Constructors and overseen by the City Planning Department. The city's former assistant planning director, Greg Peterson, was in charge of the project until he retired. Peterson has continued to coordinate the job as a private consultant for the city. The whole project was supposed to be completed by Feb. 27, 2004, with the hope that Dodge Street could be opened as early as last fall. But a string of misfortunes prevented the project's timely completion, said Peterson and Lund-Ross co-owner Horst Rossbund. Months of work were lost at the start, they said, because a subcontractor from Louisiana responsible for large portions of the garage work walked off the project. The contractor's original job superintendent had an illness, followed by surgery. He never came back. Then a panel fell off the garage, hitting and injuring a worker. That resulted in more months of delays while workers checked all completed work and did some of it over again. The tunnel ran into problems with drainage and leaking. Crews also ran into utility lines they hadn't expected that had to be moved and soil contaminated with gasoline that had to be cleaned up, Rossbund said. Most recently, the other Lund-Ross owner was in a car accident. "You can't believe this many unfortunate, sad things could happen on one job," Peterson said. "If it wasn't for bad luck, we wouldn't have any luck at all." |
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