City will fix voids under downtown sidewalk this fall

For about 40 years, folks who have been walking the sidewalk along the Nord building on Sixth Street have a had a whole lot of nothing underneath them. Beneath the sidewalk, which is held up by ailing wooden beams and some rusted steel supports, there’s a basement of sorts.

Back when the Nord Building was constructed in the early 1900s, the sidewalk along the building had pieces of purple glass embedded in it, known as vault lights. The glass allowed light to stream into the basement of the building, about 10 feet below.

But in the 1970s when the sidewalk was reconstructed, it was covered up by another layer of concrete. The voids were supposed to be filled in, according to city council minutes, but they never were.

Fast forward to today when contractor Knife River began digging up the sidewalks for the new crossing at Sixth Street and Nucleus they unearthed the vaults — about 80 feet of them that run along the north side of the Nord Building.

Rather than fix them later, the city has decided to have Knife River fix them now, considering there’s about a 10-foot drop down to the basement level below, and a retaining wall that holds the whole thing up is showing signs of failure. Knife River and the city are still working on a final design, but it will likely cost around $160,000 to $180,000 to fill in the vault, city manager Susan Nicosia told council last week.

The city does have the funds to fix it however — the city’s tax increment finance district has about $300,000 in its coffers. The city was going to use some of the TIF funds this year to pave more of its downtown alleys, but that project will be on hold now.