Standing at the mouth of a tunnel that was, until Friday, a bicycle highway, Mayor Dolores Vantry announced that Huburb had solved its housing shortage by accident.
"We didn't build a tunnel," the mayor told reporters, gesturing at the tunnel. "We built a corridor of opportunity that happens to be underground, unfinished, and slightly damp."
The Underground Bicycle Highway was announced twenty-two days ago as a signature project of Vantry's third term. Construction beneath Bellrow began two days later. On day eight, geotechnical engineer Dr. Avery Solmes discovered an unmapped 1912 subway tunnel running directly through the planned route, a finding that doubled the project budget within forty-eight hours.
Elias Brandt, chief executive of Brandt & Kilnworth Construction, described the pivot as "the most efficient change order of my career, and I have signed four hundred of them."
Not everyone is convinced. Olu Benhart of the Flats Civic Association, who has campaigned for affordable housing in Huburb for eleven years, said the association welcomed the announcement "with the enthusiasm of someone handed a cake made of gravel."
"We asked for homes," Benhart said. "They gave us a tube. We will now spend eighteen months making the tube into homes, and they will hold a ribbon-cutting and act surprised."
Councillor Ronan Tessaly confirmed that the council's investigation into the project's cost overruns will continue regardless of what the tunnel is currently called. The committee's next hearing is scheduled for Thursday, in a room that is also, temporarily, a storage closet.