Usually, BCB's David Sameshima sends me a few paragraphs' worth of comments on his visit to Wrigley Field. From his visit Tuesday, though, all he sent was this:
Like Monday, there was a lot of activity at the ballpark. I don't really have anything to add. The photos tell the story.
And that's certainly true. You can see quite a bit of concrete work and foundation work and it appears that rebar has been placed in the Jumbotron support column, an important milestone in the job.
David did send this other comment, which I find cogent:
I was taken aback when I saw how far east the openings are for the "pilings" on Shefield Avenue. Sheffield will become awfully narrow based on where these shafts have been drilled.
This can be seen best in photos 7 and 8. It was something I thought was going to happen after I saw where the temporary concrete barriers were placed toward the end of the baseball season in September. There will be room, barely, for two lanes' worth of buses or trucks to get by, but not a lot of maneuvering room. They might have to consider moving the curb on the east side of Sheffield at some point in the future.
There's one more thing I wanted to mention here. BCBer Neighborfan came across this recent building permit application, which specifically asks for:
ENLARGEMENT AND REPLACEMENT OF 3 EXISTING DOORS AND MASONRY OPENINGS, AND REPLACEMENT OF 3 EXISTING DOORS IN THE BLEACHER IVY FIELD WALL
As you can see at the link, this application was denied two days ago. Neighborfan emailed me his thoughts:
Looks like they want to enlarge three doors in the ivy wall. There are 6 doors total. 3 of those are already pretty big. It looks like they tried to get this approved without going through Landmarks. Planning denied it because of that. Not sure why the Cubs project managers would think this would fly.The Cubs are having problems getting egress issues resolved and might have proposed this as a solution. Still, they should know Landmarks has to approve this. Especially after the Mayor cited changes to the outfield doors as an issue sometime ago.
We'll have more photos here tomorrow.