Published Sept. 10, 2008 by The Current Sauce
Students who live off campus may have noticed an increase in heavy traffic this week. The lag, in part, is due to the blocked intersection of Front Street and Church Street, currently under construction as part of the Front Street brick project. Project manager John Bell plans to have the intersection finished by Friday.It took five months to complete the first two phases of construction, and with just two months before the first event of the Natchitoches Christmas Festival, Bell and his company, Progressive Construction, are racing against the clock to finish laying down the bricks.
The crew typically works from 6 a.m. to 5 p.m. five days a week. As of Friday, the crew started working in shifts to cover full 24-hour days, which will continue until the bricks can be returned to the Church Street intersection. Bell's goal for the intersection completion is less than a week away - Sept. 12. The anticipated deadline marks the beginning of the annual Natchitoches Meat Pie Festival.
Front Street, an integral part of the Natchitoches downtown area, was originally constructed in 1904. The street borders several storefronts, including the historic Kaffie-Frederick General Store and several restaurants.
Views from Front Street appear in the film "Steel Magnolias" and, for the last several years, the red brick road has been the location of "Boogie on the Bricks," a series of concerts organized by the Natchitoches Main Street Program to celebrate each NSU home football game.
Most significantly, Front Street is traditionally the site of a major tourist attraction, the annual Natchitoches Christmas Festival. One glance at the construction proves that having a parade on the street in its current condition would be problematic. Bricks and concrete have been ripped up from the existing foundation and tall yellow backhoes occupy the width of the street.
At the construction site, workers in orange safety vests call out to each other over the whirring engines and beeping trucks backing up. First, Bell's crew removes the bricks and transports them to a cleaning area. The workers install new drain lines, which will run underground to a 54-inch drain that empties into the riverbank. After the installation is complete, the crew will layer limestone, concrete and sand before returning the 104-year-old bricks to the road. The Lafayette Circle and all of the crosswalks on Front Street will be the only areas with new bricks.
Some NSU students are displeased with the project.
Ashley Schoppe, a senior liberal arts major at the Louisiana Scholars' College, lives on Second Street and said the noise during the day has increased exponentially since work on the intersection began.
Schoppe, who has worked at Merci Beaucoup for two and a half years, said the traffic is a hindrance.
"I needed to go to Wal-Mart to get some food, and it usually takes me five minutes to get there, and it took me 35 minutes to get there," Schoppe said.
Schoppe said she hopes the construction crew achieves its goals soon.
Time is essential to this project, and so far, not everything has gone according to plan, Bell said. In addition to wrecking a few homes and flooding many streets, Hurricane Gustav delayed Bell and his crew by a full 48 hours. While Bell said the storm certainly didn't hit Natchitoches as hard as other areas in the state, the power outages in Natchitoches caused plenty of trouble. Without power, the suppliers shut down and could not provide the crew with the elements they needed to work. Half of the crew members still did not have power at their houses on Friday, Bell said.
Last semester, construction workers uncovered the foundations of four commercial buildings. Thurston Hahn III, the archaeologist for the project, shows up at the site every morning awaiting new discoveries. Watching the construction from the sidewalk, Hahn hopes for workers to point out things that are out of the ordinary.
"Most people envision archaeologists using a little paintbrush. I use backhoes and tractors and bulldozers," Hahn said.
Most of Hahn's work involves urban settings, but he has never executed a project quite like this one before. Aside from the building foundations, the crew has uncovered ceramics and glass beads that may have been crafted by Native Americans as early as 1830. In the 19th century, townspeople disposed of these unwanted items in the street, leaving behind objects that provide insight into the city's past.
At the construction site, one of the workers brings over a rusty bottle cap and hands it to Hahn. "I'm just giving him a hard time," he jokes.
Hahn laughs, but takes his work seriously. He has been working on this project for years. Hahn and Coastal Environments, a company central to Baton Rouge, are under a contract to study the findings and test their eligibility for a listing on the national registry of artifacts, Hahn said.
"You're trying to prove that it's so historically important that it can't be destroyed," Hahn explained.
Before the actual construction began, Hahn conducted a background study to see what areas held the most potential for archaeological findings.
Though archaeology groups like "Beneath the Bricks" were organized in Natchitoches to support the project, not everyone thinks the cause is worthwhile.
Matt Benge, a senior history major at NSU, disagreed with the project, adding that he thought the city should have used concrete instead of preserving the original bricks.
"It's time to move on," Benge said. "Forget the bricks. Who cares about the bricks?"
Benge, who lives off campus, said the bricks are not as historically significant as other aspects of Natchitoches' culture.
"There are more important things to be focused on," Benge said.
The businesses on Front Street have been dealing with the construction for five months. Bell and most of the crew are staying in Natchitoches, at least until they finish working on the Church Street intersection. The workers also eat at the restaurants on the street on a regular basis, Bell said.
"We try to do everything that we can to support it, because I know that this puts a bind on their business, especially at a time with the price of gas and the economy what it is, they would be slow anyway," Bell said.
The Christmas Festival, which begins Nov. 22 with its traditional fireworks show, is the final deadline for the construction project.
Some people have challenged Bell's work, insisting that he can't finish the project before the festival begins.
"We're going to finish it on time," Bell said. "I'd rather work the long hours now instead of having to work them on the end, and being up against that calendar every day and having these people say, 'You're not going to finish.'"
