Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas from Phase 7 Construction! All is at rest at the moment with the holidays upon us, and if you ride down Cherokee Farms Road, you’ll see all of J.R. Wilson’s big equipment lined up, looking good for their break. They’ll be back at work for 2 days next week before breaking again for New Years. Much kudos to J.R. Wilson’s crew for keeping everything organized and looking good throughout the construction site. They’ve even brought a tractor out and have groomed much of the site. J.R. Wilson continues to do a great job, making everything go very smooth thus far.

In the last 3 weeks, water lines and primarily stormwater piping has been going in. Along with the water lines, the individual service lines to the lots have begun to be installed. Below, you’ll see a picture of two adjoining lot corners with a sewer service line and water service line stubbed up for each lot. The water is the skinnier blue pipe and the sewer is the green straight pipe.

Again, the majority of the work the past 3 weeks has been stormwater pipes, which is slow, cumbersome work. The priority is getting the run of pipe from the pond all the way down towards the EarthFit building so that the existing pipes can be tied in and the existing ditch filled in. Currently, the pipes empty into the ditch, so to fill in the ditch, we have to make sure there is somewhere for the water to go. Filling in the ditch will allow the remainder of the sewer to be installed. Below are some photos of the work being done towards that goal. If the weather remains good, there is a chance that 90% of all water, sewer and stormwater piping will be done by mid February.

A crew working to mortar in a pipe where it enters a box.  The top of the box will eventually have a drain grate on it, which is what you see from above ground when it is all finished.  The black fabric around the pipe goes around each seam to prevent dirt from getting into the pipe seams.

There was a large pile of stockpiled fill dirt from when the roads and utilities were put in for the EarthFit building and church years ago.  Unfortunately, it was right in the way of where the storm drain pipe has to go, so this excavator is moving all of this dirt to get it out of the way.

We’ve had pictures of inside these boxes before, but this is just another to show a pipe that has just been mortared into place.  The smaller hole on the left edge of the photo is where a French drain pipe will tie into the box eventually.  These are sometimes put in to help keep the edges around road bases dry.

Below are some photos taken showing a view down a future street. Each picture is paired with an image of the plan showing where the picture is taken and the view direction. One thing you’ll notice is that the streets in Phase 7 are slightly angled compared to the existing streets. This slight “crank” is a design technique to create more interesting streetscapes as it creates an opportunity to better see the architectural facades in the distance rather than only being able to see them once you are directly across from them. You can see this best in the photo showing the view down the future street that will connect to Assembly Row. The view down the future street reveals the facades of the townhouses by seeing it at a slight angle.

View down the future North Assembly Row

View down the future North Abbey Row

View down the future Louis Pinckney Sr. Blvd towards Village Row

Finally, here is the map showing the progress thus far.  Have a great holiday and we’ll check back in in 2026!