UI Starts Wooster Work

For the next few months, parking around Wooster Square will be tighter than usual thanks to a United Illuminating (UI) construction project that began Monday.

UI plans to shift portions of Wooster’s underground electrical work to run new electrical feeds from the Grand Avenue substation near the Mill River. The project plans involve trenching along sections of Chapel, Olive, Court, and Greene streets.

The project is to be completed in phases. It broke ground behind Conte West Hills School Monday morning. The work requires relocating water service on Greene and Court as well as relocating a gas main on Olive.

According to plans distributed by Wooster Square Alder Ellen Cupo, UI intends to demolish and remove a handful of splicing chambers (underground chambers for splicing cables) and put in a few new ones in different locations. All this is being done to install new duct bank spacers and conduits.

Electrical duct bank spacers support and protect the conduit lines that hold cables in a way that makes installations and identifying future repairs and installations easier.

“UI routinely maintains its electrical system and replaces or upgrades components that are nearing the end of their useful life. This work is performed to ensure customers continue to experience safe and reliable service into the future. So this project is part of that ongoing commitment,” said UI spokesman Ed Crowder.

Work will be conducted between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. and should last six months to a year, Crowder said.

“When we do things the right way, the benefits are more about what our customers don’t notice: poor power quality or unreliable service. This project is meant to ensure customers continue to receive safe and reliable service for years to come,” he stated. ​“We schedule work to replace infrastructure as it approaches the end of its useful life. We generally start this sort of work in the summer due to favorable ground and weather conditions.”

“Ours is an old system that needs infrastructure updates. It’s a once-in-a-century sort of project,” Cupo said as she took the Independent on an on site tour of the project.

UI completed a similar project recently on Grand Avenue outside of Ferraro’s Market.

Over the past few years, UI has faced criticisms from the Fair Haven Community Management Team and environmental activists regarding its responses to cleaning up English Station. (Read about those concerns here, here, and here.)

In Wooster Square, Cupo said, she anticipates the biggest concern will be parking. ​“Parking has always been a challenge around the park. But it’s necessary construction, because I think ultimately this project will help improve upon our city’s infrastructure.”

She has also heard from neighbors who are determined to ensure trees around Wooster Square park remain unharmed. Cupo said UI has been responsive on this request: It has tagged trees it promised to carefully remove and then return intact.

“There are going to be some disruptions, of course. Like parking or neighbors hearing construction, but I’m really confident about their commitment to communicate with us,” Cupo said. She added that if other concerns surface both she and the UI project managers are open to listen and respond to issues.