American Fork Leaders, W.W. Clyde Celebrate Grand Opening of Pressurized Irrigation Project

Pressurized irrigation project included the construction of a 29 acre-foot earth embankment and a reservoir consisting of native earth, sandy and clay zones with a riprap-faced embankment and a concrete floor.

Springville, Utah-based W.W. Clyde & Co. joined with American Fork City and Highland City community leaders on July 17 to celebrate the grand opening of the American Fork Pressurized Irrigation project. W.W. Clyde’s portion of this project was a $2.1 million contract that called for the construction of the lower reservoir, which is part of the larger, citywide project.

Held at the jobsite, the grand opening speakers included American Fork mayor Heber Thompson, W.W. Clyde project manager Dustin Olson and Irrigation Board president Lee Searle, among others. The speeches focused on the benefits of the reservoir and what it means for the community and citizens of American Fork, Cedar Hills and Highland.

“While this project isn’t one of our biggest, we certainly feel that this project is one of our best,” Olson said.

The scope of the project included the construction of a 29 acre-foot earth embankment and a reservoir consisting of native earth, sandy and clay zones with a riprap-faced embankment and a concrete floor. The finished product will be used as a recreational area for the community, including kayaking, running and scuba diving certification.

Greene’s Inc. Completes Lost Creek Road Repair

Members of W.W. Clyde’s project team that worked on American Fork City’s Pressurized Irrigation project.

Woods Cross, Utah-based Greene’s Inc. Construction Services recently completed the repaving of Lost Creek Road in Croydon, Morgan County, Utah. Greene’s was the prime contractor on the job and finished it in just two months. Greene’s was tasked with the removal of both concrete and asphalt on the existing 1,600-ft stretch of roadway, improving the existing storm drain system, construction of a modular retaining wall and concrete paving.

Greene’s performed all tasks of the project internally except for some asphalt paving which Greene’s subcontracted to Morgan Asphalt of Kaysville, Utah. In the past, Greene’s has been involved in smaller roadway and freeway concrete patching projects but this was its first major roadway concrete paving project.

“Greene’s attention to detail on the Lost Creek Road Repair project will be a benefit to the local business community because the road is the main access to Interstate 84 for local residents and recreational visitors to Lost Creek Reservoir, and for the local cement plant’s heavy trucks,” said Morgan County project manager Garth Day.” This was a complex project.”

MSU Gaines Hall Getting a Makeover

The MSU Gaines Hall renovation project at Montana State University in Bozeman started in March 2008 and is two-thirds of the way done. Owned by the Montana Dept. of Administration in Helena, the Gaines Hall is being built by BN Builders of Florence, Montana. The project was designed by Dowling Architecture, PC of Helena. The $27 million project is a remodel of existing lab spaces in addition to a new lecture hall. The contractor has stripped the original building to the structural skeleton and rebuilt four stories with a mechanical penthouse.

Renderings of the Gaines Hall renovation project at Montana State University in Bozeman.

The exterior consists of cast-in-place concrete and new structural steel on the penthouse and lecture hall. Exterior finishes are brick veneer and metal panels. The 98,000 sq ft building consists of a lecture hall, lab spaces, classrooms, faculty and administration spaces. The interior finishes include exposed CMU block, lab equipment, porcelain tile floors along with cherry, veneer and bamboo wall panels. The project is aiming for LEED certification, as it contains recycled materials and locally sourced materials. The project is slated for completion in June 2010.

Staker Parson Cos. Expanding US-30 in Idaho

Roadwork began on US-30, Lund to Alexander, in June and is going smoothly. ITD-District 5 and Jack B. Parson Cos. of Pocatello are working on the expansion and repave. The $15 million project will run a total of 8.2 miles and will expand the road from two to four lanes. The contractor is spending this summer building up the two new lanes and next summer will be reprocessing the existing two lanes. It is a flat, straight stretch of road, which makes the project pretty straight forward. The roadwork is set for completion in the Summer of 2010.

Hughes Building Tooele Community Learning Center

Hughes General Contractors of North Salt Lake is building a new $14.6 million Community Learning Center in Tooele, Utah for the Tooele County School District. The facility will provide an adult education learning center component that gives students the opportunity to complete their high school diploma.

Designed by Salt Lake-based MHTN Architects Inc., the project will provide classes and training for technically-oriented careers such as culinary arts, cosmetology, child development, graphic design, health science and engineering. The two-story facility will consist of 98,000-sq-ft of labs, classrooms, testing/assessing center, multi-purpose center and a cafeteria. Exterior finishes will include EIFS, metal panels and brick veneer. The contractor is building solar panels and a wind turbine, which will be used as learning tools for the engineering classes. Interior finishes will include sealed masonry and tile walls.

“The Community Learning Center will provide the people of Tooele County with greatly enhanced educational opportunities for the next 50 years, and beyond,” says Sean Wright, marketing director for MHTN. The project is scheduled to be completed in August 2010.

Ground Broken on Pocatello Creek Interchange

A groundbreaking ceremony was held August 12 for the I-86, Chubbuck interchange to Pocatello Creek Interchange project. The $8.1 million project was awarded to Knife River of Boise. The project, which uses federal stimulus funds, will add 3.4 miles of new highway to help travelers in the Pocatello metropolitan area and will add auxiliary lanes on Yellowstone Avenue to Interstate 86/Chubbuck Interchange, east to I-15, also south to Pocatello Creek Interchange. This roadwork is slated for completion by mid-2011.

I-84/Vista Interchange Gets Underway

Idaho governor Butch Otter, Boise mayor, Dave Bieter and other community officials kicked off a groundbreaking ceremony August 5 for the new Interstate 84/Vista Interchange project in Boise.

Central Paving Inc. of Boise is the contractor on the $17.8 million project, which is being funded in part with federal stimulus money to create jobs, stimulate the economy and improve traffic. The new interchange will be the first in Idaho with a single point urban interchange (SPUI) design. The design has a single traffic light at the center of the interchange, allowing a more efficient flow of traffic. Vista Interchange provides primary access to downtown, the airport and Boise State University.

“Beyond the jobs and economic activity this project will create, having a safe corridor of commerce at the very gateway to our community is essential to providing the kind of environment where people want to bring their families and their business” said Otter. This project, which is the seventh of ten projects to modernize I-84, is slated for completion by September 2010.

URS Awarded AMRP Projects

The State of Utah Division of Oil, Gas and Mining (DOGM) has awarded URS Corporation’s Salt Lake office a three-year contract to perform reclamation engineering and related services on an on-call basis for the agency’s Abandoned Mine Reclamation Program (AMRP).

The AMRP is responsible for safeguarding abandoned mines that present physical safety hazards to the public. The program conducts inventories of abandoned mines that aid in the identification of hazardous sites and set priorities for reclamation. Before a site is closed, it is checked for threatened or endangered plants and animals, cultural and historic resources, and wetland values.

The services that the URS project team will provide include mine inventories, cultural/historical studies, National Environmental Policy Act documentation, biological studies, and research and identification of mining properties’ landowners. The project team also will evaluate public safety and environmental hazards of the abandoned mines, and perform reclamation engineering and design and construction oversight services.