WASHINGTON - The West Wing of the White House is vanishing.
In recent weeks, an expanding and sometimes earsplitting zone of excavation has enveloped the mansion's famous office wing. Heavy equipment and metal-and-concrete superstructures are part of the vast construction project.
The front door and the Marine who guards it have disappeared behind a high green-and-white plywood fence. From Pennsylvania Avenue, all that's visible is a sliver of second-floor roofline.
For years to come, the front yard at 1600 Pennsylvania will remain a noisy building site, say officials in charge of the White House's "Big Dig."
The White House describes the job as an overdue upgrade of underground utilities. That includes water and sewer lines, electrical conduits, pipes for chilled and hot water and steam heat systems, and storm sewers. Heating, air conditioning and fire alarm systems are being replaced. Some systems are getting backups.
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A mysterious tunnel is being built, too.
Crews have poured huge concrete pylons, erected retaining walls and brought in truckloads of steel I-beams. The construction site has expanded from in front of the West Wing around to the side and across a parking lot to the next-door Eisenhower Executive Office Building.
Inevitably, the work has fueled speculation that what's really being built is some secret, new underground lair.
Fresh inquiries by The Associated Press to the General Services Administration, which is supervising the work, have elicited denials.
Spokeswoman Sahar Wali said the steel and concrete is needed "to create enough space and a pathway for replacement of the new utilities infrastructure at the proper depth and location."
She said the construction is not putting in place longstanding plans for underground office space or an underground driveway entrance. She said it will not involve the Presidential Emergency Operations Center, the hardened bunker under the East Wing that's a shelter for nuclear attack.
As for that tunnel, she said it's not a new shelter - just a means of maintaining access to the utilities.
The West Wing dig is but the first step in a multiphase project that will eventually progress across the White House grounds - and last for a total of four years.
Its scope can be gleaned from its hefty cost: $376 million. Of that, $86 million is just for the West Wing.
