BIG Doings at My Condo Building!

Friday started out as just a normal day - fiddled on the computer for quite a while in the morning doing some searching of places in Italy - both to visit and for lodgings.  Nothing definite - just looking...  I decided since it actually wasn't beastly hot, I'd walk over to Subway for lunch so I did that and when I got back to my apartment building, I ran into three of my neighbor ladies in the lobby who were on their way to Starbucks and asked me to come along.  I decided what the heck and joined them.  We had a nice long visit, lots of talk about travel (we're all retired and enjoying it), then walking back we stopped in at the Mug and Pia shop to browse for a bit.  Started the walk back to our building, turned the corner onto 10th Avenue, and I, for one, about dropped my teeth.  You could see from where we were that the entire block in front of our building was blocked with all kinds of trucks and they were putting up barricades and such - not that any traffic could have used that stretch of road anyway!  It looked like some huge catastrophe or something.

So we walked on to our building and I stayed outside to see if I could figure out what was going on.  It wasn't long before someone told me that they were all there to take down all the signage that is on our building for the bank that's been located there since before I moved in.  I knew they were moving to a new location and in fact yesterday, they had all sorts of people there moving things out.  So, I counted, and there were four flatbed trucks carry cranes - at least that's what I thought at first.  Turned out actually three of them were carrying cranes and one of them was carrying big extensions to add to two of the cranes. And then there was a smaller green crane already unloaded and getting set up to work, plus various and sundry other trucks.  I got all excited and took some pictures from upstairs out my window:

 

 Cranes to the left of me...the little green guy and one of the "extra parts" flatbeds

Cranes to the right of me...unloading what turned out to be leveling platforms for the cranes' leveling feet to sit on.

And cranes right in the middle.

I decided I would go up the roof and be ready to take pictures when the action started up there.  That's where the big sign is - actually I think probably two.  While waiting I tried to get a picture of what they'll be removing, but I wasn't positioned very good for that:

I'm on the roof deck facing that open door so all you can see basically is the side of the sign - the grey, flat looking thing with (if you could see it) a big 5/3 in red on it.

So, I waited and waited, getting pretty warm up there in the sun and finally thought I should probably go see if my neighbor on the 12th floor knew for sure that this was in fact what was happening.  Turns out it was happening but not until tomorrow morning.  This afternoon they were just getting everything set up and the little green crane was taking down the red and black illuminated trim that runs around the building's street sides.  So I took some videos (I'll only post two of the ones I took cause they drive me crazy trying to get them set up right) and just had all sorts of fun keeping track of what they were doing from my bird's eye view.

The first video shows the trim removal although they were so close to the building it was hard to get a good picture of what was happening.  To see it just click HERE.

And the second one shows two of the huge cranes working to get the extension put on one of them.  To see it, just click HERE.

Obviously a lot more fun to watch "in the real" than on a video, but might as well share them anyway. :)

So they worked and worked until 7:00 p.m. and managed to have everything set and ready to get started tomorrow morning.  I've got to remember when I wake up early - like I always do - not to lollygag around in bed but get dressed and up on the roof to see all the action.

As for tonight - this is now the view right outside my bedroom windows:

And around 9:00, after struggling with trying to get more videos uploaded, I opted to come to Starbucks and publish what I already had and took this picture to show where they're taking off that trim I mentioned.  I think in my video I said it was at the third or fourth floor level and obviously it isn't - it's right over the first floor.

They got a fair amount removed already.  Tomorrow, they'll have to block off the street in front of the building (this is the side) in order to remove the trim there.

Hopefully, I'll get some good pictures tomorrow up on the roof...speaking of good pictures, one thing I've decided for my next trip (if it includes Florence, which I imagine it will...) is that I'm going to get up one morning at the crack of dawn and get myself to the Duomo before the hordes of people are there and see what I can get in the way of some pictures.  Always good to have a goal, right?