Virginia Beach asks for re-do on faulty work

Work crews were back on Laskin Road with pallets of bricks this past week.

Their job: to pull up the pavers lining the sidewalks and crosswalks and replace them with a new set of bricks.

You may be wondering: Weren’t those bricks put in just a few months ago as part of the Laskin Gateway project?

Yes. But city officials were unhappy with the job.

Just months after contractors laid the bricks down, officials started to notice cracks and fading, said Chris Wojtowicz, the city’s project manager for the $33 million Laskin Gateway project.

“We were paying for high-quality pavers and weren’t getting it,” Wojtowicz said.

The city withheld about $40,000 from the general contractor and complained about the product.

Beach officials visited the Interlock Paving Systems plant on the Peninsula where the bricks were made to figure out what went wrong.

Turns out the stone the company was using in its pavers was too big and not holding the blocks together, Wojtowicz said.

Interlock Paving Systems agreed to redo the bricks and replace them, said Dave Bruckheimer, a director with the company.

“We’re making good on it 100 percent,” he said.

It was a manufacturing problem, and some of the material was defective, Bruckheimer added.

The replacement shouldn’t take too long, Wojtowicz said.

But when crews start pulling the pavers in the crosswalks, it might cause traffic delays.