Some Saybrook College and Lanman-Wright Hall residents, already irritated by the early-morning hurly-burly of construction crews on Elm Street, could have more trouble getting their beauty rest this weekend.
Weather permitting, crews will begin round-the-clock work to install a new manhole on Elm Street in front of Trumbull College. The work will begin on Friday evening and continue through Sunday. Saybrook Master Mary Miller has warned Saybrugians that the work could be unusually disruptive.
Crews from SBC Communications, which provides Yale with telecommunications services, will carry out the installation. In order to work on the manhole, SBC crews will have to block off one lane of traffic on Elm Street. Since the City of New Haven has stipulated that the lane can only be blocked during the night, SBC will work in the middle of Elm Street on Friday and Saturday nights and behind the existing barriers of the Trumbull renovation site during the day.
SBC must install the manhole in order to complete repairs to a telecommunications line that runs under Elm Street and serves Trumbull and other nearby buildings. The line was damaged over the summer during excavations at the beginning of the Trumbull renovation project, Project Management Director Steve Brown said.
When the line was first damaged, SBC installed a temporary splice. To complete repairs, crews will install a manhole over the site of a permanent splice, Brown said.
Despite the added noise this weekend, Miller said she thinks students in Saybrook will understand the necessity of the temporary disturbance.
“I think it’s unfortunate — the LSATs are on Saturday morning. It will be tough, but it’s all part of the larger picture of renovation,” Miller said. “As painful as it is, we have to acknowledge that we too were renovated and we don’t know what the noise toll was while we were in Swing Space.”
Students in Saybrook and Lanman-Wright have been coping with construction noises since school began, although not around-the-clock. Construction crews generally stop working late in the evening and begin work in the early morning.
“Usually starting around 8:30 a.m. there is drilling and loud machines,” said Austin Kilaru ’07, a Saybrook student. “It’s not ruining my life, but it’s pretty loud.”
Kilaru said that the construction has changed his daily routine.
“I have become more of an early morning person because of the construction,” he said. “I have been waking up an hour earlier than I would have. At least it’s a lot better now that it’s colder and I can close my windows.”
Shazan Jiwa ’09, a Pierson student living in Lanman-Wright, said he has been coping with disruptive construction noises since the beginning of his time at Yale. He said he is frustrated that Pierson freshmen, who inhabit the Elm Street wing of the dorm, were not informed of this weekend’s round-the-clock construction.
“It really is an inconvenience,” he said. “I wish they would have told us.”
Kathryn Au ’08 said construction only adds to the noise she hears from the pedestrians at the intersection of Elm and High streets. She said she hopes the noise is not too unbearable this weekend.
“I hear the crosswalk too, so construction is the last thing on my mind,” she said. “But at 4 a.m., I might get a little bit disturbed.”