BCB's David Sameshima visited Wrigley Field Thursday morning and filed this report.
I arrived at 11:30 a.m. I neglected to note the temperature. It must have been in the 30s. Also note that the time shown on the scoreboard is incorrect. Power must have been cut off. Up until now, the clock has shown the correct time through the construction project.Sheffield was busy when I arrived. Traffic was backed up at the Sheffield/Addison work gate. I saw that they were using the crane suspended bucket delivery system to transfer concrete to the Gate Q area. When I made my way to Sheffield and Waveland, I was surprised to see all trucks staging at the work gate there. When I made my way to the firehouse on Waveland, I saw why. There is new utility work taking place on Waveland Avenue outside of Gate K. This work is blocking access to the work gate there, and to the firehouse. Engine 78 has been relocated to a parking space in the Blue Lot just west of the firehouse. With the crane positioned on Sheffield, the work gate at Sheffield/Waveland was the only accessible work gate. Due to technical issues that I was having I was not able to take photos of the left field construction work on Thursday. With the regular movement of traffic along Waveland, I was not able to walk up to the fence to take photos of the triangle lot either.With the steady stream of trucks leaving the job site, the street sweeping truck was kept particularly busy cleaning up the mess being left on the streets. Just wanted to note what the residents must put up with, and how the contractor has to work with the community on this issue. That is why I also photograph the street sweeping trucks, to illustrate that they are attempting to address this. Whenever possible, the street sweeping truck will trail every truck leaving the job site.
One thing I noticed in David's photo set from Thursday is that they have begun to dismantle part of the right-field inner wall, for replacement. You can see this most clearly in photos 6, 10 and 11. According to Mike Bojanowski, who has also been watching some of this work, they seem to be clearly saving some of the bricks for re-use when they reconstruct this wall. The demolition and rebuild of this part of the wall could wind up going as far as what will be the right-field bullpen doors.
David is planning a Friday visit so we should have more photos here tomorrow.