Christopher Peak Photo
Barges await repairs at Buchanan Marine in May 2017.
An Annex shipyard is getting a $200,000 upgrade, after the City Plan Commission approved the project — with a condition.
Buchanan Marine, LP, plans to install a rail-mounted, retractable shelter at its Ferry Street location that should speed up the pace of its its repairs.
In recent years, the shipyard owners cleaned up the site. But they struggled to keep a full workforce, halving staffing down to 12 employees in 2014.
Currently, barges return to the site by motoring or being tugged up the Quinnipiac River. Above-waterline repairs are easy, as the barges simply park in one of the eight berths. But making a fix on the belly of the ship’s hull is much harder. Vessels in need of below-waterline repairs are pulled along two existing marine railways, which can haul up to five 2,000-ton barges at a time, and are placed on supports and covered in tarps before any maintenance can begin.
Buchanan’s latest improvement will remove that final step of the process, by housing all future repairs under an aluminum-framed enclosure with three 60-foot-long telescoping sections. The shelter will keep the workers and the barges free from the elements, including rain and runoff.
Stephen Benben, of Triton Environmental, Inc., explains the new structure.
Before Buchanan can build the shelter, a two-month undertaking that requires installing six steel rails and concrete footings, the shipyard management needed a waiver for its failure to meet city standards on heat reflectivity.
Commissioner Adam Marchand.
Technically, half of the 1.51-acre worksite should be covered in shade trees or heat-reflective material. But because the massive barges require so much space to maneuver, much of the land is bare. “The entirety of the site is utilized by shipbuilding activities and there is no free space available,” planning staff wrote, in recommending the waiver. Staff added that the new structure will also cover a quarter of the hardscape, and its white fabric should reflect heat.
That’s “definitely an improvement,” Commissioner Adam Marchand noted, but still not good enough. He asked if Buchanan had also considered also painting the roofs of its existing office building and storage shelters a reflective white.
It hadn’t, said Triton Environmenta’s Stephen Benben, a project manager and engineer. “We’re hoping that we can improve what we can without making it economically unfeasible.”
City Plan staffer Anne Hartjen suggested a compromise: Commissioners could add a condition that when any future roof is replaced at the shipyard, it must be painted a highly reflective white.
Benben agreed that wouldn’t be burdensome, and the panel voted unanimously to move the project forward.
Seriously, while heat reflective roofs would be good in July and August, wouldn't we want heat absorbing roofs through most of the year to reduce heating needs? Heat absorbing roofs would lessen fossil fuel usage, possibly slowing global warming. Hey, shade tress are great, but mandating a virtual forest in the middle of a city seems silly. Concentrating development in cities, while sparing rural areas from development is one of the best ways we have of being kind to the environment. Per person, Manhattan walks more lightly on the earth than Bedford.