Making Way for a New 57 East Entrance on Salbide Avenue

There is another visible change coming to the 57 East site this week.

Crews are removing the remaining stem wall from the former Caldwell Tanks building along Salbide Avenue. That wall once formed part of the original industrial building that occupied this side of the property.

Now, it is coming out to make room for one of the new entrances and exits into 57 East.

What is a stem wall?

A stem wall is the short concrete wall that connects a building's foundation to the structure above it.

Most of the former Caldwell Tanks building has been gone for years, but portions of its original concrete foundation and stem wall remained along Salbide Avenue.

Those remnants conflict with the new site layout, so they have to be removed before the new entrance, roadway, curb, sidewalk, and surrounding improvements can be constructed.

It is a small piece of demolition compared with an entire building, but it marks a pretty significant change in how this property will eventually connect with the streets around it.

A new connection from Salbide Avenue

The 57 East civil plan includes a new vehicular entrance and exit along Salbide Avenue.

Creating that connection requires more than simply cutting a driveway into the property. Existing concrete and site improvements have to be removed, grades have to be established, utilities have to be coordinated, and the new roadway has to tie into the larger circulation plan for the development.

Removing the old stem wall is one of the first visible steps in making that new connection possible.

Meanwhile, some of the important work is going underground

Also arriving on site this week are precast underground structures that will become part of the infrastructure serving 57 East.

These large concrete structures may be hard to miss when they arrive, but once installed, most people will never see them again.

That is one of the funny things about site development. Some of the largest and most important pieces of construction happen before the buildings ever start going up, and then they are buried beneath the finished development.

Underground infrastructure, grading, drainage, utilities, roadways, and access points all have to be coordinated before vertical construction can follow.

Watching the site change

For anyone who remembers the old Caldwell Tanks property, the work along Salbide Avenue is also an interesting reminder of just how different the site is becoming.

Pieces of the former industrial property are being removed while the infrastructure for the next version of the site goes into place.

Right now, that means concrete walls coming out and concrete structures going underground.

Not glamorous, maybe.

But definitely progress.

We will continue sharing these smaller construction milestones as site development moves forward at 57 East.