Union Street was closed for a few hours Wednesday morning while construction crews installed a heating and cooling unit using a crane.
Athens drivers might have had to take an extra detour on Union Street on Wednesday morning while a crane lifted a heating and cooling unit onto the roof of the buildings damaged by November’s fire.
But those few hours of inconvenience for drivers meant construction crews are one step closer to restoring those buildings.
“It’s just a step,” Jared Dean, co-owner of Dean Heating and Cooling, said. “There’s still a lot more work to go. The plumbers are in there. The electricians will be starting to come in soon.”
Dean said his company had to wait until work was done on the roof before they installed the unit.
The unit includes a gas furnace with air conditioners attached to it.
“It’s a pretty typical heating and cooling unit,” he said. “You’d find them in any commercial building.”
Dean said, although the process might have caused a spectacle, it was essentially no different than some of the behind-the-scenes work that has already been done.
“It looked exciting because there was a crane,” he said.
But Dean also said his company will now be able to take a more active role in the construction. Up until Wednesday, Dean Heating and Cooling had only had two or three days of working on site, he said.
“We’ll be around here a lot more often now that these units are in place, so we can start actually putting all the ductwork in and progressing,” Dean said. “We’ll be here for the next couple of weeks off and on getting everything prepared”
Dan Geer, a worker for Mike Myers Construction, the contracting company in charge of the restoration, said he and his coworkers have been on site nearly every day since construction began.
“They’re trying to get it done before winter break,” he said. “We’re making pretty good process.”
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