Sidewalk hunting

[47thelement]

Anybody know of a way to find out when sidewalk work will be done in major cities? I live near a major East Coast city and would love to see whats under the cement.

 

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[Mr. Mojo]

It would be cool if you could find the trolly station spots or bus stops from past. They would be the best areas to try first. Don't have a clue on how you could get that info perhaps in a state archive, or local historical society.

 

[Tom_in_CA]

Here in CA, contractors who bid on such public works projects, have a "clearing house" called the "Builder's Exchange". The Builder's Exchange, in addition to their other services for contractors (like housing voluminous blueprint plans for each job they list), has a periodical that goes out (and can be seen on-line, if you are a member), that lists projects from around the state, that the contractors can bid on. Public works bids like this are also usually required to be published in the classifieds of a paper (you know, that tiny print in the back of the newspaper classifieds that no one ever reads). But of course, it's impractical, if you are a contractor, to hunt down every newspaper in your state or locale. Thus these type of contractor exchanges were born. I don't know what it would be called in your state (try "Builders Exchange" to start with). I suspect that to avail yourself of their listings and services, you'd have to be a member, which can run into the thousands per year. But I have found that I can just waltz right in to their local office/lobby, in my city (just act like you know what you're doing, and no one questions ya), and browse through their monthly periodicals which are set out. Once I see something that looks like it would be a good urban demolition project (school or park turf scrape, sidewalk ripouts, etc...), then you can go to the exact plans they file, for that exact project, and see the blueprints. The blueprints can be dozens or a hundred pages, depending on the complexity of the project. Like, every single aspect of standards has been engineered out already, so that everyone's bidding "on the same page". By looking at those plans, you can even determine ahead of time how deep they're required to scrape, whether or not fill-dirt will be added, etc... (so nice, eh? )

Another way to keep abreast of potential projects in your area, is to subscribe to google news searches. Because invariably, if a town or city in your state, was going to have their downtown sidewalks re-done, it probably made it into some blurb, in some newspaper, to announce such plans, right? So you program in key word searches like "sidewalk" "streetscape" "oldtown" "downtown" "demolition" "renewal" etc... You can pick countless combos of words, to "catch" a pertinent article from some podunk town's newspaper elsewhere in your state. These google news searches can be programmed to automatically alert your email box, when an article, which contains the words you selected, appears in a newspaper. You can also elect to limit the search to only newspapers in your state, or only for specific newspapers. Naturally you will get useless hits all the time (like "Steelers demolish Saints in historic game!" etc.... So you will have to do a lot of deleting from your daily in-box. But I have actually come across old-town demolition sites this way, in out-of-the-way locations that I would never have accidentally run across by random driving around.

If either of these two tips works for anyone reading this, you owe me your first seated or gold coin you find in a site found these ways. I accept pay-pal