Pouring, Digging, Building

I was happy to see the tower caps getting some attention today.  The old shingles were being scraped off.  These two tower caps are the ones on the west side of the upper north lot.

A closeup of this tower cap indicates it was from the northeast tower.  News articles from a press release on April 18th indicated that three of the towers will for sure be returned to their original perches.

These two tower caps closer to University Avenue were also getting attention.  I'll watch these and hope for the best for the fourth tower cap, whichever one that is.

I learned about this brick wall along Second South.

It is part of the foundation wall for the old Hotel Roberts which was built in 1882 and stood at 192 South University Avenue.  The wall would have been at the back of the hotel, on the left side of this picture. The dirt street you are seeing was then Main Street, but is now University Avenue. I actually know a few things about historical stuff and didn't have to ask anyone to know that the pole on the right side of the picture is an electrical pole, yes -- right in the middle of the street.  Eventually they were moved to the sides of the streets.  

I had gone to the site hoping to catch the north wall foundation pour.  Instead, the concrete pump worked on the west porch this morning.  We should be able to watch north foundation pour this afternoon via the construction cam, which is going on as I'm uploading this post.

As usual, it was never a dull moment.

An onlooker had questions about the west lot, and perhaps you do, too.  Okland, working for Nu Skin, and Jacobsen, working on the tabernacle, both stay very busy in the west lot. The original Nu Skin building is in the center of this picture, with their new addition to the left.  Ongoing work on their underground parking garage can been seen to the left in this picture.  The original above-ground Nu Skin parking garage stood where the crane is, and it filled that space to First South, which ran east and west across the bottom of this photo.  That part of the lot is now owned by the LDS Church and will be turned into underground parking for the new temple.  

This blue triangle caught my eye and I wondered if this was a bathtub for Baby Track Hoe.  I realized the blue mats and the poles were part of the strange contraption being assembled in the west lot on Wednesday. When I got home I could see writing.  These are trench shields so the walls don't cave in.  This part of the west lot will eventually house mechanical stuff.

Work progresses on the shared entrance to the underground parking. 

Vertical rebar is being placed along the perimeter of the north lot, which at some point I should probably start referring to as the underground annex.  Notice the surveyor. 

He checks these sensors along the walls every day to make sure the tabernacle is stable.  No word on what he will do if he finds that the building is moving. 

On Wednesday, if you remember, I learned that the level of the north annex will extend through to the west lot and then throughout the south lot.  I speculated that the level might be at the top of the stairs which lead to the south side of the basement.  Mr. Track Hoe was working hard this morning and had already deepened the east side of the lot to at least five feet below that stairwell landing.

You can see how the level along the east barrier is slowly extending west.

By the time I returned from the west side, Mr. Track Hoe had gobbled up the stairwell landing.  I believe progress means deeper, at least for now. 

Work on the south forms progressed today, too.  The underground entrance to the new temple will be on this south side at the annex level.