By Gus Saltonstall
A major water main construction project is coming to a busy stretch of Broadway on the Upper West Side.
The city will install 2,500 feet of new 36-inch steel trunk water main pipes and 120 feet of 48-inch iron water main pipes along Broadway from West 92nd to 97th streets, and then also on West 97th Street from Broadway to Columbus Avenue, according to a presentation given to Community Board 7’s Transportation Committee on Tuesday by Maria Centeno of the New York City Department of Design and Construction [DDC].
The water main project, which is expected to begin in the fall of 2027 and end in the fall of 2030, will also add 14 fire hydrants, 300 feet of new, combined sewers, restored curbs and sidewalks, upgraded street lighting and traffic signals, and new ADA-compliant pedestrian ramps throughout the stretch.
Centeno, the DDC spokesperson, said the old water mains need to be replaced to avoid breakage that could result in flooding and service outages.
During the project, there will be necessary water shut-offs for the buildings and businesses within the Broadway and West 92nd to 97th streets corridor, for which the city says it will provide 72-hour notice, along with weekly look aheads and quarterly updates.
Multiple CB7 committee members expressed their worry to the DDC about the water shutoffs, especially for local restaurants and businesses. Outdoor dining sheds would also have to be removed if they are located in the work zones.
“I would urge giving much more advanced notice than 72 hours and also making sure to work with the businesses,” one committee member said.
Here are some of the other changes that Upper West Siders can expect with the water main work between West 92nd and 97th streets.
- Temporary street closures
- Staging areas for construction equipment
- Bus stop routes within the project limits may be affected during the construction, but those specifics have not been decided on.
Due to the excavation connected to the work, the DDC will coordinate a rodent survey of the area and install rodent control stations to try to keep the pests at bay.
Also of note, during the construction, the city will replace lead service line pipes for three qualified addresses between West 92nd and 97th streets, at no cost to the property owners, as long as they don’t opt out of the free upgrade.
You can check out the water main presentation for yourself below.
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This is a random thought but I hope that they minimize street closures for street fairs and open streets and the like in the vicinity when the streets are closed for this. It will already make things difficult enough before having additional streets closed.
This is not ideal but at some point you have to do maintenance – no way around it.
How do fixing water pipes takes 3 years?
Pretty clearly stated there will be other things upgraded as well.
Its a government contract. That said there is a maze of stuff underground they have to dig in and around to get down to the water mains. All that other structure has to be supported on some type of scaffolding so things like phone service are not knocked out.
It would be much faster, cheaper, efficient etc. to do what they did on Columbus.
There they opened the ave for about 10 blocks at a time with at most one lane open for traffic. They also worked 7 days a week 7 to 7. But got done much fast and this allowed other utilities to also make needed upgrades.
It should be noted that doing it that way was very hard on stores
West 81st and Amsterdam here, we had it for at least three years and it was a massive project. Loud and unrelenting, but necessary. My sympathies to the neighbors of the north.
What else can they do to the West 90’s?
They already put 7 mentally ill/drug addicted men’s shelters (MICA shelters) between West 94th to West 99th between 2019 through 2025 using a back-handed false ratio of Beds to Neighborhood – saying that the 1100+ beds they put in was not too much to the entire UWS – making it not “oversaturated” – yet they put them all in those 5 blocks. Yet, no additional resources (police, mental illness specialists, lighting) were given to that stretch of Broadway – Something every shelter is supposed to come with. That to me is a case to fight in court.
Anything else they want to do to ruin businesses and the residents’ homes on Broadway?
I don’t think they’re “doing” anything to the West 90’s. They’re making badly needed updates to the City’s infrastructure.
I recently attended a presentation on how the City deals with everything that’s underneath the street. Fascinating but also frightening. The sewage piece seems to be the most complex. The City person who spoke said that the original creators of our water system were visionary, but those who created the sewer system were not.
I also recall a New Yorker article many years ago about how vulnerable our water system is to risks from normal deterioration, accidents, and terrorism. In response to those risks, the City finally installed a 3rd water tunnel. When they did so, my neighborhood (W60’s) was under construction for several years.
Agree. The W90’s and W100’s are a ghost town of empty store fronts due to so much crime and homeless. People are afraid to open a business.
Shopping habits have changed, that is all. Crime is in fact at historic lows. Really. (Now get angry about good news.)
West 97th to 100th Columbus Ave, a real pigsty and cesspool, The store managers/ owners take no pride in the store fronts. Garbage everywhere.
That includes Whole Foods, TJ Max, Burlington, Target, Starbucks, Five Below, Barebureger, etc. etc.
It’s a horror.
I live in this neighborhood and I think you’re hallucinating.
Can they put in a bike lane along with the new pipes while they’re at it?
So now we have to have bike lanes underground too? Is there no end to it?
Or they could run bike lanes alongside the subway tracks. :-p
Three years?!!
Carneige Hall was built in 13 months back in 1891. How is it possible that this will take 3 years?
The underground back then didn’t have constant running water, electricity, sewage, subways, endless cables for TV, Internet, and I could go on, but why bother. Oh, and cars? Horses and carriages.
Actually I think that was the Empire State Building which is even more impressive. Here on 112th and Riverside we have a mess of equipment and ugly barriers sitting for months with no action.
some of the barricades have been there for years!!!!
I am active at Carneige. 13 months.
@George:
The Empire State Building was built in just 1 year and 45 days (410 days).
Three years to replace the water mains??? I wonder how much (in 2026 dollar value) it cost to construct the Empire State Building, and how much the city will be paying to replace the water mains.
I lost THREE storage bins filled with antiquarian books, magazines, family archives, and the value of my entire record collection (as the covers had to be discarded, along with all of it) when our 100-year-old water main broke in the wee hours of the morning, and no one turned off the water for five hour at 62 and Broadway right before the pandemic of 2020. The entire area was flooded. Insurance did not cover water flowing in from the outside, either. The neighborhood all suffered. The water main being worked on is also 100 years old. It’s well worth it.
You should live in the area of the last major water main break (during the pandemic), Broadway in the 60s. I’m sure that cost billions of dollars of damage and some businesses have not recovered. Best Buy had to vacate the location and the store is still empty, the theater used by NY Technical Institute is still undergoing renovation and I’m sure the owner of what was Lincon Plaza Cinema has been plagued with clean up.
In short, as much as it can be a bother, preventative work is far far preferable to the damaged caused by a water main break.
This could be a wonderful opportunity to plant street trees on the blocks that do not have them.
If repairs are needed, repairs are needed. But … THREE YEARS????
For the benefit of those on Zoom, as well as anyone who plays the recording of the meeting, it would be nice to see the agenda (via screen-share) when it is approved.
Please consider this for future meetings.
Is there anyway to get a downloadable pdf copy added to this article of the plan presented?
Will this work be done on the north or south bound lanes? Though due to the subway tunnels I would have to say both. When the did this on Columbus ave a number of years ago we got lucky as there was one main that had trunk lines going off it so only one part of the street was dug up.
Given all the new residents living in the area and the fact that there is no. desire to ever close homeless shelters, just provide more beds and services, which the area is already saturated with, as someone noted, clearly there must be a corresponding need for sewage and water capabilities. What a blessing! And maybe they can add a few public toilets so we can stop hearing about this problem as well. Humans need access to water systems. Hooray.
2 years is enough time, this is NY.
We had a similar project near us, and the biggest problem was that they covered the holes in the road with metal plates for non-work times. Those plates would become loose and they created a loud thump with every vehicle that ran over them. Maybe they can find a way to secure those plates.