Can more go wrong?
Ten years ago the MBTA first teased us with visions of a stylish, efficient, new transpo hub at Kenmore Square.
Three years ago the project got underway.
Twenty months ago it was supposed to be finished.
It isn't.
Today, the square is still a ripped-up, car-choked maze of Jersey barriers, traffic cones, and yellow tape. Some entrances to a partially spiffified Kenmore station are open, but some are still vivisected messes of framing and machinery. Most of the glass skin has been laid on the bones of the spectacular giant arched bus station, but that emerging gem is still surrounded by wire fences and chopped-up pavement. A legion of signs directs hapless commuters through a warren of barriers.
Kenmore Square is ug-lee.
This has gone on so long that the old, funky Kenmore Square is a distant memory. So long that the magnificent Rathskeller and the sublime Deli Haus are all but forgotten. So long that most people probably think the generic, ye olde reproduction Cornwall's Pub is the real Cornwall's Pub, which used to pour pints in a cozy basement across the street. So long that Mr. Butch - the tall, dreadlocked, homeless king of Kenmore Square - made a new life in Allston, then met his maker.
It has been so long that even the Disneyish, neo-whateverian architecture of the butter-stucco-and-brick Hotel Commonwealth is starting to look historic.
Among the reasons for this interminable debacle, according to the MBTA:
New elements were added to the project after the initial design, some of them required by law. They added millions to the budget and about a year to the original timeline. This is not optimal, but it was unavoidable.
After ground was broken, workers discovered utility lines nobody knew were there, and they had to move them or work around them. This is amazing, but it happens.
Somebody realized the bits used to hold the glass panels on the bus station wouldn't actually hold the glass panels on the bus station, so they had to halt construction and replace all of the bits. This is unfathomable.
Planners were too optimistic about how much of the station could be closed for the project. They realized after they began that they'd choked off too much of the site. This is poor planning.
Also, they didn't count on the Red Sox being quite so successful. MBTA spokesman Joe Pesaturo and design and construction manager Charlie O'Reilly say the fact that Sox fans were in Kenmore into the fall meant more delays.
Hang on: There were a total of nine home games in the 2005 and 2007 postseasons, only six on weekdays. We are supposed to believe that six games meant a major delay?
Enough of the past. Let's look to the glorious future. Late last year, the MBTA told the Globe that the project, now pegged at $47.3 million, would finally be finished at the end of this year.
Man, oh, man, the holidays are going to be so great around here. The center of Kenmore Square will be a beautiful, level, landscaped wonderland of ingress and egress. Come Christmas, commuters will be in heaven, yes?
No.
It seems the MBTA and its contractors need another six months beyond that.
Things are going really well, O'Reilly says. Workers are laboring on weekends. The busway canopy will be finished in the next 30 days. Most of the surface work in the square will be complete in the fall.
But entrances and exits and improvements to the train station are going to take a bit longer than even the revised estimate.
Now they say the new Kenmore will be "substantially complete" by April of 2009. And that the whole thing will be well and truly finished by next summer.
No, really.
Yvonne Abraham is a Globe columnist. Her e-mail is Abraham@globe.com.
