By Monday morning, she had plenty of reasons to smile, as workers finished the framing on most of the first floor of the new Cunha's Country Store.
Within just a few weeks, she said, workers should finish the framing of the entire structure.
 Visitors to downtown Half Moon Bay Monday morning found the beginnings of the frame of the new Cunha's Country Store. |
The store, long-regarded as the heart and soul of downtown Half Moon Bay, perished in a six-alarm fire on May 21.
Since then, city officials and local contractor Bruce Turner of Half Moon Bay design-build firm TurnerBuilt have worked tirelessly to expedite the project through all of the design, planning and regulatory hurdles imposed on the project. They did so to meet strict deadlines imposed by Ashcraft in order to stay on budget.
Workers spent nearly two months on the foundation of the new building, which although extremely vital to ensuring a quality structure, doesn't provide the visual symbols of progress for which many Coastsiders have been looking.
"I thought they'd never get done with all that foundation work," Ashcraft said.
TurnerBuilt production manager Skeeter McKitterick said the project was progressing well considering the tight deadlines and the frenetic pace, and that the framing should give the community cause for optimism that the project will meet its early spring 2004 deadline.
"We're really happy," he said. "It's hard when you're figuring out a lot of things after you've already started a project, but we're really happy so far with where we are.
"It will really have a visual impact when we get all of the framing up."
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