People’s Park was a major local landmark with a long history that is well known to students, faculty, residents, and alumni. It had become a home to otherwise homeless people whose existence was inconvenient for the university’s expansion plans and an eyesore to arrogant passersby.
The park’s history includes both civil and violent disobedience, including against the university itself.
It would not be surprising to hear that, whatever is built on this lot, it is subsequently destroyed by an act of arson or other vandalism.
I am surprised they are taking the risk and making the investment at all. IMO it would have been safer to just buy some of the private properties surrounding the park instead, even at a premium.
A handful of Molotov’s at night once a week during construction can make it very expensive to build something.
Sugar will completely eliminate concrete’s ability to cure. A single pound of sugar can destroy an entire truck of wet cement.
Not that I’m advocating for it. But it’s laughably easy to sneak onto a site with a hardhat, safety boots and a vest, and sabotage active construction.
Neat: https://fritzpak.com/is-sugar-a-good-concrete-retarder/
Although I’m unsure about the pound of sugar to entire cement truck claim.
No, a construction site contains plenty other stuff than concrete and steel: tools, equipment, building materials, temporary buildings for the workers, cables and piping.
On top of that each time concrete gets fire damage, it gets weaker and may need to be replaced, at least core samples + weeks of analysis time + $$$ is needed to determine the damage.
And let’s say they eventually finish building the apartments, they may never stop smelling like a BBQ.
And then they need to hire 24/7 security, and maybe new workers because they don’t want to work in a DMZ.
Apparently just a kilogram of sugar mixed into a ton of concrete will destroy the ability of it to actually function correctly as concrete. But I learned this here on Lemmy and have not checked the veracity of it, so take it with a pinch (handful?) of salt.
No for the concrete you use sugar, and for the steel… I don’t know maybe jet fuel or something.
I low-key wish I could put you and @deegeese@sopuli.xyz in a jar and shake it.
In the nicest way.
It’s a controversial local issue and in my lifetime I’ve seen local opinion shift from strongly anti-University to now mostly in favor of development.
I credit this to the original activists dying of old age, combined with a younger generation that has never known the park as anything except a place where people overdose in tents.
They’re building student and homeless housing on it and leaving half the park.
…but why
Berkeley wants to turn the park into housing and I guess they hope the wall will keep protesters out.
Berkeley wants to turn the park where homeless people are staying into housing for homeless and undergraduates… While refreshing 60% of the park.
Why are people upset about housing homeless and undergrads? Is this some NIMBY shit but people dont think it’s NIMBY because it’s their park this time?
Obviously people are upset because public space is being taken away for this.
If you ever notice construction is stalled in your city, it’s because it’s a racket.
They low bid the contract.
They take contract.
Work stops because they didn’t ask for enough money.
They’re already there, it’d cost too much to fire them or move their supplies and equipment. They know this so they drag their feet until the client pays more.
Construction begins again.
I work in construction insurance, protecting the government and investors against construction companies that do this. Our underwriters study the project, the construction company history and everything related and we qoute a price that the construction company should pay even before the government or the investors transfer anything. If the construction company or the project fail for any reason we take control over the project and find a new construction company to complete it. After that, our lawyers go after everything owned by the construction company and their executives to try to recoup anything we can.
I’m curious about your opinion on what the reason that construction takes longer and costs more in the US than in other countries is.
I wish our construction was like in Japan. Instead we have the worst, slowest companies in the Chicago area. How does it take months or even years to fix a road AND they start a new project a mile away on the same road at the same speed. Then somehow the road end up bumpy anyway cause they didn’t fix around the manhole covers correctly.
I don’t live or work at the US, so I don’t think my opinion is worth more than shit. But I would guess you are mixing private with public projects. Private projects usually go on schedule because they’re not a lot of parties involved and everyone wants to finish the project asap to start a new a one. With public ones you have a lot of people involved because everyone and their granma think their opinion is valid and they are being affected. But this is the same on basically everywhere on the world, except maybe China.
The shipping containers make it so much more dystopian, and calling it “The People’s Park” is just bad writing, even for schlocky YA fiction.
I do, but I was writing from the perspective that it was invented for the Hunger Games.
So this is why all the third places have dissappeared, greed? Man, fuck this dystopia.
