April 15, 2020
An Update on Construction at The Lodge at Truitt Homestead
To Our Valued Lodge Members: We hope this letter finds you and your loved ones healthy and well. What a few weeks, it’s been… We have all been surprised and amazed at what is happening in the world around us as a result of the coronavirus crisis. Who would have guessed that we would be directed by the governor to stay in our homes, that businesses would be shut down with everyone wondering what’s next for us? We suppose that ‘social distancing’ will become the Webster’s Dictionary “Word of the Year” for 2020 because surely none of us heard this term before a few months ago. We are writing this letter to give you an update on what we are doing with the construction of Truitt Lodge in the face of this prolonged situation. For those of you who visit Truitt Homestead regularly, you can see that our construction effort continues daily. This effort complies with the governor’s “essential business” criterion exemption of his business activity restrictions. Under this exemption, we are required to maintain strict health monitoring and safety standards. These include strict procedures for all workers as they come to work each day, making sure that workers maintain a 6-foot separation among them during the workday and strict procedures in the event workers exhibit symptoms on the job. Sussex County is doing drive-by inspections regularly and has made it known it will shut down job sites that violate the new standards established by the governor. As you can imagine, working under these conditions has an impact on work efficiency. Despite this, we are pushing as hard as we can, and we are currently seeing reasonable progress in the building daily. There are several things that we are monitoring closely because they can impact our progress. We need to recognize that if workers become ill with the virus that worker, and others in contact with him or her, will need to be quarantined. Thankfully we have had no positive coronavirus instances so far. We also may need to manage and deal with subcontractors and workers who may elect to shut down if the situation worsens. Additionally, we need the county inspectors to continue to visit the project to maintain our inspections and permitting schedule. At the present time the county inspectors are working on a limited schedule. Hopefully you can understand that all the above has caused us to reevaluate when The Lodge will be ready to open. A month ago, a May 15th opening date was a reasonable expectation. Today, we must