The pits were then covered with precast concrete blocks that do double duty to cover the tree vaults and to provide underfoot support as sidewalks. A tall, narrow cage protects the trees from various elements, and was specifically designed to be secure enough to lock your bike to. This one is between Slater and Albert, across from Snider Plaza.
In the foreground, they've made a gravel pathway across the construction zone for pedestrians to cross Bank. But the thing to look at in this photo is the set of trees at Bank and Gilmour in late May, partway through reconstruction. The five trees along this stretch are in front of the CCOC building, and are owned and maintained (i.e. watered) by the CCOC. Prior to the reconstruction, these were about the only trees along Bank Street. 
This one at the end of the row (shown in late April) didn't survive the reconstruction. You can also see the old tree guards that were on them. (As of early November the old tree guards have been removed, but new ones haven't been added yet).
In late July, that tree was removed, but I believe the others were undisturbed. One of the problems with the trees in this location is that they don't get much sun.
Here's the uprooted tree, again in late July:
In early October, the trees for this stretch were delivered in front of the Bridgehead on Bank and Gilmour, across from Herb & Spice. As you can see, the sidewalks have already been poured in this section, unlike in the first section of Bank, where the trees were installed before the sidewalk was poured. Incidentally, I hear through the grapevine that the two angel murals above Wilde's (visible in the background of this shot) will be replaced sometime soon. 
Here are some of those tree vaults in Phase II, looking North from Lisgar to Nepean, with the Grace Ottawa food store at right. As you can see, the tree vaults are much smaller than in the first phase, but are bigger than the band of sidewalk that goes along the street:
Here's a closeup of a tree partially planted in one of the vaults. It looks like the sidewalk on the far side hasn't been poured yet. While I usually stick my camera through the fence, this can give a false impression that the views of the construction are unobstructed, so every now and then I take a shot with the fence in the foreground as a reminder. This is on the North-East side of Bank and Nepean, looking South-West, in late October 2008.
Here are some of the new precast concrete pieces for the tree vaults, awaiting installation just South of Bank and Gloucester. One is already installed around the tree behind them. (November 2008)
Unfortunately, the guards weren't installed before the winter (which did hit early last year, in fairness) and many of the vault covers were cracked and damaged by the snowplows, including this one near Bank and Lisgar (Wallack's in the background):
This past August, the new guards were installed around the Phase II trees, which had been planted the previous fall. They're a shorter, more stylistic variant. They're sturdier, and wrap around the concrete base of the tree vault covers, to keep the pieces tight. This should help to avoid the type of damage caused over the past winter. (Note: Colour has been "warmified" on this photo)
Note the detail on these tree guards. They have little round balls at the tips of the fins, no doubt to minimize eye-poking, but they also add a decorative touch.
When the trees are in full leaf, they really add colour to the street. This gingko tree (described in this PDF as "extremely hardy but slow growing") on Bank and Cooper in Phase III looks nice in the early September's sun:
Oh, and fear not, a new tree was planted at Bank and Gilmour to replace the one removed. 
The tree guards on Phase II and III's trees are noticeably shorter than the tall, slim ones on Phase I. Here are two along the vacant lot at Florence (photo taken last week):
Which makes a great segue for the next post: Benches. Tune in on Saturday for that post.
While on Bank, I wanted to take a photo of the really ugly version of the decorative street lamps on Bank Street, which are lamps attached to regular wooden posts, instead of the full decorative lamps. But when I checked out the photo... let's just say I laughted and named this photo "bucket feet":
If you want to see the Met building, check it out now while it's still there!
The neighbour told me that the firefighters had been there for an hour and a half. By the time I got there, they were packing up. Apparently they suspected asbestos in the building, so they were carefully removing their outer layer and placing their firefighting clothes in large yellow decontamination bags.
Nobody was injured, although one resident had just gone into the shower when the alarms rang. It does not appear that the damage was too severe, as it didn't appear to make it on any news sites, and was overshadowed by last night's other, more severe, fire in Vanier
But I'm focusing more on Phase II and Phase III of Bank Street, from Laurier to Somerset and Somerset to Arlington, respectively. They have a different style of lamp from the Northern section of Bank.
The new streetlamp bases can be seen here lying just south of Somerset, awaiting installation. They are elliptical on the cross-section, but the sides are vertical. They have large bolts built in for attaching the street posts, and holes in the side connect to conduits coming through the middle for electrical connections. Some more concrete utility access ports are stacked behind them.
As mentioned in the previous post, Phase II of construction (Laurier to Somerset, mostly done in 2008) had separate installation for the pieces of sidewalk with and without lamppost bases. This allowed for views like this one, where we can see the connections under the sidewalk looking North from Lisgar. The photo was taken in late October 2008, when the Mondrian's podium was still under construction in the background.
South of Somerset, in Phase III, the sidewalks were constructed more continuously. In this shot (from the same day as the photos in front of Hartman's in the previous post), it's clear that the square of sidewalk with the lamppost is being installed at the same time as the other squares on the block.
As you can see above, they were pouring the sidewalk where the lamppost had already been installed on the West side of the street, in front of Hartman's. Across the street at the same time, they were installing the lamppost where the sidewalk had already been poured. This was at the end of this past August, as you can see by the nearly-completed Mondrian.
Here's a lamp in early September near Gilmour, shortly after installation. They had not yet been illuminated. There's something about the style of the lampposts that doesn't fit here, though. It's just too modern for the ornate buildings on this block.
Not that they're ugly. They make a decorative touch on the rest of Bank street, and the series of them creates a nice rhythm when you view them at the right angle. This shot is looking South along the East sidewalk from Gloucester.
Unfortunately, the hydro wires were only buried North of Gladstone, paid for by the Bank Street Business Improvement Association (BIA). South of Gladstone, there's no BIA to pay to bury the hydro wires, and the City didn't want to cover the cost, so wooden poles were kept for overhead hydro wires. As with on Preston Street, a variant of the street lamps were used to keep the rhythm of the lamps while using the wooden poles (having separate lampposts in addition to the hydro poles would have cluttered up the streetscape too much).
I was also surprised to see many of the old poles with the 50's Diner-style Bank Street Promenade roundels still up after much of the work was done. Particularly this one at Bank and Florence, where the sign was destroyed in the fire that consumed the building on the corner back in 2003. Surely they wouldn't leave that old frame up there?
There's another one here in front of Hackett Shoemakers at Frank Street. This view is from late April, before most of the work reached this part of Bank Street.
Not sure which one is Hackett? Maybe that's because its sign was obscured by this roundel, which is still there after the new lampposts were installed!
Now, a keen eye would note that the sidewalk squares with these old posts were not poured with concrete. That's because the posts were only kept long enough for the buried hydro wires to be installed and activated. When the posts and overhead wires were no longer needed, they were removed in late October/early November, greatly simplifying the streetscape (though one of those big ugly sign advertisement boxes was installed in front of the Watch Clinic). Note also that a Vietnamese place is opening up in the former Don Alfonso's restaurant. Vistek has also moved from this location, down to where the art supply store used to be at Argyle.
The new lamps create a great ambiance for Bank Street. I had to take a few versions of this photo to get the lighting right. But this photo (looking South from Gilmour) was taken at 9:30 pm and it's pretty dead--let's hope that when the street is re-opened Bank Street once again becomes a vibrant place to live, work, and shop all hours of the day.
Tune in in a couple days for Part III: Trees
Then I got busy, and by the time things had died down, I had taken many more photos that I wanted to incorporate into the series.
Here's a reminder of what the sidewalks looked like on Bank before the recent reconstruction. This shot looking South from Bank and Gloucester in front of the Tim Horton's shows a rather rather cluttered, claustrophobic, uncoordinated corner--and that's after they moved the newspaper boxes away shortly before this photos was taken in October 2007. Many intersections had an engraved stone block with the name of the intersecting street laid into the pavement. The one at this intersection had long been removed and filled in with asphalt. Another at Gladstone (photographed in this post) had been broken up through wear and tear.
Construction on Phase three of the five-phase Bank Street Reconstruction project began a year ago this week, with the removal of the sidewalk at the plagued South-East corner of Somerset and Bank.
Most of the other sidewalks down to Catherine survived until the majority of the utility work under the roads was complete. These squares of sidewalk in front of the James Street Pub were being delicately removed in late May.
Once the old sidewalks were removed and a bed of foundation gravel was laid at the right height, the new sidewalk was outlined with a guide rope suspended from a series of posts. In this mid-August photo at Bank and Gilmour, the bulbout outline is clearly visible, and guarded by yellow caution tape. The spool for the rope is visible in the foreground.
The wire is used to line up the wooden concrete forms, as shown here on Bank and MacLaren in front of the Quizno's restaurant. A gas-operated tamping machine is used to compress the gravel underneath to avoid damage to the sidewalk caused by settling.
On long, straight sections of sidewalk, they don't use wooden forms, but instead a curb-laying machine such as this one in front of the Rogers Plus store on Bank and Gilmour. It's faster, smoother, and more consistent. Eric Darwin has photos of one of these machines in use on Preston Street over at West Side Action.
Here's a closeup of the working end of the machine:
Here's the old sidewalk in front of Hartman's, looking South from Bank and Somerset. This was always a narrow block to walk down, especially where the Bank Street BIA's big black advertising box occupies a good portion of sidewalk real estate. (The old round Bank Street Promenade sign is also visible on the post in the foreground, and others are visible in the background in various rotations) This photo was taken in early December 2008.
During construction, the sidewalk had been removed. By mid-August, you can see some wooden stakes beginning to mark the new sidewalk outline on the other side of the Modu-Loc construction fence.
At the end of August, the curb was poured, and another tamping machine sits in this nighttime photo waiting to compress the gravel under the sidewalk to be poured.
Two days later, forms have been installed for the sidewalk, and a moving assembly line of Local 527 workers pour, level, and smoothen the sidewalk. The worker in the blue helmet is holding a paintbrush, which he's using to add a border around the street lamp.
And here's the finished sidewalk. The traveled portion of the new sidewalk is as wide as the entire old sidewalk, and there's an extra section for furniture to be installed. On the North half of the block, it's even wider. A new bus shelter was installed in the wider part of the sidewalk in the last couple days, which will be welcome to the many, many people who wait at that stop. Grooves increase traction at the intersection, and double as a guide for the visually-impaired.
I think the construction process was refined over last year (Bank will reopen two weeks ahead of schedule). For example, the section pictured in the photo below shows some squares of sidewalk yet to be poured in the Phase II part of the project between Laurier and Somerset. There's an earlier photo of that block in the aforementioned post from last year, showing just how many people walk through this block looking North from Gloucester:
These squares of sidewalk hold the foundations for the street lamps, and are reinforced with steel rebar. The sidewalk in front of Hartman's doesn't have rebar, and the squares with the lamps are poured at the same time as the rest of the sidewalk.
Here's another peculiarity I spotted yesterday: six sewer grates are built into the sidewalk across from Lewis street. Six. One presumes a lot of water collects at this corner during storms. This in-curb design is great (pun unintended) for cyclists, because you don't have to swerve around them into traffic. Since they aren't in the asphalt portion of the street, cars don't run over them and break apart the surrounding asphalt, meaning they don't require repair nearly as often, meaning less patchwork of asphalt to be broken up. Sewer grates on the roadway make for vicious cycling.
All in all, the new sidewalks are much wider, fresher and cleaner than the old ones. Here's another old-and-new shot of the sidewalk in front of Herb & Spice at Bank and Lewis, December 2008:
And September 2009. Finally there will be room for adequate bike parking!
The Google Street View car went down Bank street in March, before most of the work was started. Pop a step or two down the cross-streets for a later view. While you're waiting two days for the next post, why don't you take a few minutes to check out what Bank Street used to look like on Google Street View, then take a stroll down Bank Street and notice the difference.
