CHATHAM – With the commercial fishing and visitor season rapidly approaching, delays in rebuilding the fish pier observation deck in Chatham is causing issues.
Commercial fisherman are unable to unload their catch in the usual way because the electric fish hoist have been disconnected during construction, and the lower parking lot is still congested with construction equipment.
“It’s becoming a safety issues as we get fishing, and I would like the board to hopefully look into what we’re going to do with the observation deck and the actual time before we go fishing,” commercial fisherman Doug Feeney, chairman of Chatham’s Aunt Lydia’s Cove Committee, told selectmen last week.
“There seems to be quite a bit of work that needs to be done to the observation deck and we are already past schedule now.” Feeney added.
Andy Baler, owner of Chatham Pier Fish Market, said the construction has been extremely disruptive to his business, “It’s absolutely killing us, we’re absolutely starving for people to come down.”
New visitors to the fish pier could be forgiven for not knowing about the observation deck, since no trace of it remains.
Concrete footings have been poured for the structure but for now, crews are focusing on completing work on the fish offloading area below, Health and Natural Resources Director Robert Duncanson said.
The reconstruction of the observation deck necessitated the replacement of the fuel pipes running from underground tanks to the fuel pumps next to the packing house.
The 1.6 million contract with Sciaba Construction Corp. of Walpole initially called for the work to be completed by or before May 15th, in what town officials acknowledged was an aggressive schedule.
Consecution began in April and has been delayed due to six different change orders for the job from the town.
These change orders have extended the completion date to June 26th.
“We’ve issued six change orders to that project which have extended the contract completion date to the 26th of June so that’s the current time line the contractor has to finish the work up,” Said Duncanson.
“We’re going under the assumption, and the contractor is as well, that he is going to meet that deadline.”
With commercial fisherman getting busy again, and with federal fishing quotas giving them only limited time windows in which to fish, the pressure is on the construction job to be completed.
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