The Minnesota Wild were eliminated from the Stanley Cup Play-offs on May 1, and a giant sinkhole opened up on West Seventh Street — a block away from the Xcel Energy Center — exactly one week later.
Coincidence?
Yes. Still, some businessowners are calling the timing a small blessing. No one wants a gaping hole running some 35 feet into the ground to open in front of their business. But if it had to happen, better that it take place in the post-season lull after professional hockey has let out and before the height of the summer concert season.
At the Downtowner Woodfire Grill, there’s been “no impact on our business,” said general manager Patrick Johnson, shortly after Tuesday’s lunch rush. “It’s been busy.”
That sentiment was shared by a driver for Domino’s pizza, a server at Tom Reid’s Hockey City Pub and other frontline staff at West Seventh Street businesses. Private contractors under the supervision of St. Paul Public Works will spend up to two months repairing the man-sized sink hole that opened on the evening of May 8, forcing ongoing partial road closures between Chestnut and Walnut streets.
Officials with the Xcel Energy Center said their day-to-day operations and events are not impacted by the sinkhole. They reminded fans attending Wednesday’s Minnesota Frost game that they need to plan ahead due to road closures connected with the sinkhole.
General traffic is being detoured between Kellogg Boulevard and Grand Avenue, though West Seventh in that stretch remains open for local business access, with one lane open in each direction. Sidewalks are unaffected.
“We don’t want through-traffic there,” said Lisa Hiebert, spokesperson for St. Paul Public Works, on Tuesday. “This is why we’re saying local business access only.”
Otherwise, there have been no direct water or sewer impacts reported by businesses, according to the city.
City crews are examining whether water may have loosened and weakened the earth in the affected area.
“It’s a good argument for why we need to reconstruct roads,” Hiebert said. “What we can say is a lot of time, sinkholes are caused by voids caused by water, but it’s still a little early to say what it was and what it wasn’t. Sources of water can come from many places.”
Filling the hole will be no simple patch job. Contractors will have to dig more than 30 feet through sandstone and limestone, assess damages and then rebuild the sanitary sewer tunnel.
The work, which began Monday, will involve installing new utility connections for surrounding businesses, building out a new shaft to the surface and then replacing the road surface, without damaging a 20-inch water main. To ensure worker safety, crews will install temporary supports for the depth of the project.
“Nobody ever wants things like this to happen, but this is a good example of how quickly the city and the agencies came together to limit impacts to businesses in the surrounding area,” Hiebert said. “The businesses, everybody was really great to work with.”
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