Workers with MJ Raymond Construction were literally breaking ground on Monday — the crew used a giant saw to cut lines through the asphalt parking lot where the bathrooms will go.

The bathrooms are one piece of the village’s broader Berkeley Green park project, funded as part of a $10 million Downtown Revitalization Initiative grant and tax incentive package awarded to Saranac Lake by the state in 2018. The village was awarded $4.3 million for public projects through the DRI and village Community Development Director Jamie Konkoski estimated the two-bathroom building will cost around $467,000.

This parking lot will be closed for around two months as crews begin excavating the land to begin to lay the foundation and bring utilities in, according to Konkoski. The bathrooms themselves won’t be finished and opened for use until next year, though.

Konkoski said people can park at the Dorsey Street lot and in the lot by the police department on Main Street overnight in the meantime. There is also time-limited parking at the Main Street (former Sears) parking lot.

MJ Raymond employees begin cutting through the Pontiac parking lot on Main Street in Saranac Lake where they are starting to construct public restrooms, funded by the village’s Downtown Revitalization Initiative award. This lot will be closed for around two months as the foundation for the bathroom building begins. (Enterprise photo — Aaron Cerbone)

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What will the bathrooms be like?

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One bathroom will be 88 square feet and the other will be 74 square feet. The larger room will be handicap accessible. Both are gender-neutral bathrooms.

The full building will include a covered walkway, drinking fountains and a maintenance room. The village board has been discussing the hours and times of year the bathrooms will be open for use. The board will need to decide how often the bathrooms will be cleaned and when before officially setting those hours.

Pictured above is an artist’s rendering of the completed Berkeley Green bathrooms. (Provided photo)

The bathrooms will be located in the front corner of the parking lot, behind the Berkeley Green bandshell, and take up three parking spaces and the corner of the lot. It does not narrow the entrance to the lot much, because the building was limited to the size of the parking spaces, but the entrance to the lot is very narrow to begin with.

“It’s a weird parking lot because it’s not a real parking lot. It’s a building that burned down,” Konkoski said. “The retaining wall there was an old foundation. The old Pontiac (Theatre). That’s why we call it the Pontiac parking lot.”

“The dimensions of the parking lot, why is it so hard to get in and out of there? Because it’s not truly a parking lot. We just use it because that’s what we do when buildings burn down,” she said.

Konkoski said the village had hopes to put this bathroom project off until later to not disrupt the busy summer goings-on in that area of the village, but other DRI projects — like the Woodruff Street Streetscape project and River Walk extension — have stalled due to permits, easements and utility snafus, so since the bathrooms were ready to go, they’re getting done now. Still, she said, the main disruption should just be noise during work hours.

Konkoski said she will share updates for all DRI projects on the village’s social media platforms and website.

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Other DRI projects starting

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Last week, landscaping work began at William Morris Park on the corner of Bloomingdale Avenue and Depot Street. Crews there have ripped out trees and topsoil, and have started to regrade the ground. More information about this project is available at https://bit.ly/3PsllPQ.

The Main Street and Broadway Urban Forestry project is tentatively scheduled to start on Monday. This will involve planting trees along the street and realigning the intersection of Main Street and Broadway in an effort to improve traffic safety.

Konkoski described this as turning the “Y” intersection into a “T” intersection. To create this new shape, she said the sidewalk in front of the Surgical Eye Care offices will be expanded to bump out into the street, creating a plaza-style space on the corner.

Though this narrows the road at the intersection, Konkoski said engineers believe it will have a positive impact on traffic safety at the odd and often-confusing intersection.

“People who aren’t from here kind of don’t know what to do,” she said of the current intersection. “I’ve seen people do a U-turn there.”

The road is so wide, she said, motorists aren’t guided as to where they should go. She said the changes will create a more traditional intersection.

There will be a stop sign on the section of Main Street for traffic traveling from Church Street to stop at before turning right onto Broadway or left onto the rest of Main Street.

“Contractors will work during the day and will keep the site clean during non-work hours due to Saranac Lake’s downtown-centered events,” Konkoski wrote in a press release.

The village plans to have all its projects DRI finished by the end of next year.

Anyone with questions about these projects can contact Konkoski at 518-891-4150 ext. 235 or comdev@saranaclakeny.gov.

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CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story incorrectly said in a photo caption that the parking lot where the construction is taking place was on Main Street, Lake Placid. It’s Main Street, Saranac Lake. An earlier version of this story also quoted Jamie Konkoski as saying that the foundation neighboring the parking lot is from the old Pontiac Hotel. It’s the old Pontiac Theatre. The Enterprise regrets the errors.