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We stop at the lip of a pit. Mr. Yoannis points to a black sheet lining a hole. Workers are laying low-density polyvinyl chloride membrane “to stop methane gas from seeping into the carhouse,” he says. “There will be pipes to vent it.”

Last year, Pomerleau told the TTC they could deliver the Leslie Barns by the summer of 2014, Mr. Yoannis says.

“Right now they are saying the fall of 2014 and we are seeing if we can make up the time. The contractor is adding more resources to get the structure built faster.”

I ask him to describe the challenges.

“It’s a contractor’s problem,” Mr. Yoannis says. “I don’t want to badmouth the contractor. It is taking them longer to pour the foundations than anticipated. We met with them and asked them to accelerate that portion of the work.”

Pomerleau has even less to say.

“We are bound by contractual obligation with our client and we are not allowed to comment,” Carolyne Van Der Meer, a Pomerleau spokeswoman, says from Montreal. “That is also out of respect for our client.”

The TTC raised eyebrows at city hall and in the construction industry over its decision to lay connecting tracks for the streetcars along Leslie Street, from Commissioners Street to Queen Street, and for how it awarded that deal.

Originally, the TTC budgeted $14-million to lay the Leslie track. Then the TTC called Toronto Water, and learned the utility owns two “very large” storm sewers in an eight-by-eight foot box culvert, plus two sanitary sewers and a water main, all running under Leslie, says Lou Di Geronimo, general manager at Toronto Water. He asked the TTC to relocate those pipes.