For 12 hours, Alex Longino paced slowly back and forth on Brinkerhoff Street.
Donning a tan cowboy hat, thick jacket and neon vest with the words “Luck Bros.” scrawled across the back, Longino kept watch over a newly redone stretch of sidewalk Monday evening near the intersection of Brinkerhoff and Beekman Street from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. the next day.
Longino’s position, said vice president of Luck Bros. Construction Chris Luck, stemmed from the recent vandalism of an approximately 10-yard-long stretch of sidewalk that occurred while the company was in the process of repairing it.
“Last time we redid the sidewalk, somebody vandalized it, and they didn’t want to have to do it over again,” Longino said.
The damage was severe enough that it forced the Luck Bros.’s crew to redo the entire project from start to finish, Luck said.
“They basically destroyed it,” he said. “They threw cinder blocks in it, and they wrote their names in it.”
The cost to repair the sidewalk has not yet been pinpointed, but Luck said his company has taken an estimate of the monetary value of the damage.
“I think we are figuring it was about $10,000 worth of damage,” Luck said.
Longino’s main job while stationed on Brinkerhoff Street was to ensure that no people or foreign objects disturbed the fenced-off portion of concrete while it was settling. Although concrete generally takes about a month to cure fully and reach maximum strength, it can handle light traffic after a few days if left alone.
After their first repair attempt was vandalized, Luck Bros. surveilled the drying sidewalk nonstop for a 48-hour period after returning to fix it.
Having employees stay and watch over job sites to prevent vandalism is rare, Luck said, but not unheard of in certain areas that may encounter high volumes of traffic or mischievous behavior.
Logino declined to specify an exact amount, but said he was paid over $20 an hour for monitoring the curing sidewalk.
Gavin Reken, a Plattsburgh State student who lives directly across the street from where the sidewalk was vandalized, said a loud commotion coming from that area in the early morning hours of Friday, Oct. 9, woke him.
When he woke up, Reken said he immediately heard the sound of a man yelling and witnessed the man across the street from the apartment he lives in on the second floor of 150 Brinkerhoff St.
“I looked out the window and there was this guy throwing stuff around — beer cans and other stuff,” Reken said.
Reken said the individual appeared to him to be intoxicated.
“It kept me up from like 3 to 6 (a.m.), and it didn’t stop until the construction workers showed up,” he said.
Reken said that sometime between 9 and 10 a.m., police arrived.
“Later on that day I saw the construction workers and the police looking at the sidewalk,” Reken said. “It was visibly scuffed up.”
That same day, at 12:40 p.m., a report was filed by University Police on Brinkerhoff Street stating that they were involved in a criminal mischief investigation in collaboration with Plattsburgh City Police.
No suspect names have been released to the public by law enforcement at this time; however, both Luck and Longino said one arrest has been made in response to the vandalism. Longino also said police are in the process of searching for other individuals that may have been involved in the incident.
Luck said he believes the suspect arrested could possibly have been associated with a fraternity at PSUC, but he was unsure whether the suspect is currently enrolled as a student at the college.
Email Thomas Marble at news@cardinalpointsonline.com
