Water Street affordable housing set to be erected Friday

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6 Water Street will have six affordable apartments.

Rome wasn’t built in a day, but apparently six affordable apartments in Tisbury can be, if all goes according to plan this Friday. Construction is scheduled to begin at 8:30 am, Friday morning, on the Island Housing Trust affordable housing project at 6 Water Street, next to the Stop & Shop and just a stone’s throw from the Five Corners intersection.  

“The crane will be on site at 8:00,” contractor Farley Pedler told The Times Tuesday. “We’ll be cranking from 8:30 on. Our goal is to have all the boxes set by the end of the day, but we may be squeezing into Monday morning.”

Mr. Pedler said the state police will oversee traffic at Five Corners as well as escort the massive modular blocks from the R. M. Packer lot on Beach Road, where they arrived by barge on Wednesday.

The six-unit apartment building will be composed of eight modular “boxes,” four of them 12.5 feet wide and 55 feet long, and four that are 12.5 feet wide and 30 feet long. Plans call for six 600-square-foot apartments, three handicapped accessible ground floor units and three on the second floor, each with one bedroom and one bathroom.

Mr. Pedler said there are no detours planned for Five Corners traffic. “We have it scheduled so the boxes will be brought to the site at times when no boats will be arriving,” he said. The large crane required for the job will be positioned at the car rental lot next to the 6 Water Street building site.