Amada Morrison / Watertown Daily Times

New water lines are being installed in front of the Cahill Building on Public Square in Watertown.

PUBLIC SQUARE WOES: Street and sidewalk will be dug up to install correct size of pipe

Three years after the completion of the $8 million reconstruction of Public Square, workers have returned to dig into a portion of the street and sidewalk to correct a mistake that left the upper floors of four buildings with inadequate water service.

The project is being completed after the city inadvertently left out installing larger water lines to the Cahill Building, 14-16 Public Square, and buildings at 12, 18 and 24 Public Square during the reconstruction of downtown Watertown in 2008. City officials have acknowledged the lines should have been completed during the Public Square project.

Last year, owner Thomas P. Cahill dropped plans for a $375,000 project to create upper-floor apartments after finding out his building didn't have adequate water pressure to install a state-mandated sprinkler system. That touched off a debate at City Hall about how to supply larger volumes of water to some buildings on the southwest block of Public Square. The buildings are connected to 1-inch diameter laterals, which are not large enough to serve commercial sprinkler systems.

Water Superintendent Gary E. Pilon said the city will use $14,000 in Community Development Block Grant funding to pay for the water service project, which includes installing an 8-inch line that will tap into the main line and four 6-inch lines that will be hooked into each of the buildings, he said.

If the weather cooperates, the project should be finished by the end of next week. Work crews have to snake the new piping around a concrete electrical vault and duct and sewer and gas lines, he said.

"It's a lot of work to put it in," he said. "Some of it has to be hand-dug."

Mr. Cahill couldn't be reached for comment Friday, but he said in March that he would proceed with a project to renovate the upper floors of the three-story building into four one-bedroom apartments. His project initially was put on hold while engineers figured out how to solve the water issue for his building and the other three. Then, last July, Mr. Cahill halted the project, blaming too much red tape.

His plans to create apartments in his building come at a time when several similar downtown projects are in the works, including in the Rent-A-Zone building and the Wing Wagon building, both on the other side of Public Square.