2008 ACE AWARDS
Silver Award Winner Last year, Heath Construction was awarded the prestigious Silver ACE Award by the Association of General Contractors in Denver. The award recognized Heath for the company’s outstanding work building Fairgrounds Park in Loveland, Colorado. This description of the project, excerpted from the original AGC Award application, expresses both the magnitude of the job and the immense value it represents for the community.
Heath Construction Returns a River to Her Community
Extreme Makeover -- Fairgrounds Park, Loveland, Colorado
Newly constructed Loveland Fairgrounds Park, hugging both sides of the Big Thompson River south of Loveland, Colorado, was home to Larimer County Fairgrounds for more than 50 years. Loveland residents remember the good times – summer picnics and 4-H competitions at the popular site. But they also remember the night of July 31, 1976, when a towering wall of flood water roared out of the Big Thompson Canyon and dumped its fury across fairground fields. Still the worst natural disaster ever to hit Colorado, the raging river killed 144 people as it tore through the canyon. It destroyed hundreds of homes and businesses, wiped out part of U.S. Highway 34 and forever changed the way the people of Loveland would relate to their normally placid river.
The inspiration for the new park was to provide Loveland citizens a recreational area that would honor the area’s history, preserve the natural environment, use existing structures wherever possible and allow people to return to the river in safety once again.
Meeting Construction Challenges Head On. As construction manager and general contractor, Heath Construction’s first charge was to build a park complex capable of withstanding the devastating force of the rare, but all-too-possible, 100-year flood. In transforming the old, abandoned fairgrounds to the enlivened Fairgrounds Park, Heath’s toughest construction challenges came from the Big Thompson River.
The Big Thompson, which meanders through the park’s center, gave Heath only four months of low flow to accomplish critically important concrete work seven feet below the river’s bed. River water is low and moves slowly only from the end of one irrigation season to the beginning of the next. Big water would return to the river with spring runoff and the scheduled release of irrigation water in April 2008. No exceptions!
As soon as irrigation season ended October 15, 2007, the Heath team began to dam the infamous Big Thompson River. Using excavators in the river channel -- and slogging through cold water and mud with high boots and heavy gloves -- the team moved concrete Jersey barriers across the river bed and backfilled with dirt. They installed two 18” pipes that carried the entire river from the bottom of the dam to a point 500 feet downstream of the construction site. A second dam downstream prevented backflow into the work area.
Heath self-performed all concrete work for the entire park project. Following U.S. Corps of Army Engineers standards for construction inside a designated floodway, Heath teams built concrete structures to withstand possible scour associated with extreme flooding. They constructed heavy bridge abutments and a series of four towering radius walls, each 15-feet-high on top of 8-foot-wide concrete footings. The footings were constructed 4 feet below the thalweg (the lowest point in the middle) of the river.
Working well below water level, water constantly percolated into excavations throughout the river bed. Six pumps worked day and night to dewater the excavations, and that water was filtered through silt fences, check dams and other erosion-control devices before returning to the river channel. Careful management of storm drainage prevented release of sediment into the river. As a result, the river’s water quality remained excellent.
Focusing on structural concrete from December through March, crews moved forward regardless of winter weather. They poured concrete for footings and walls anchored deep in the river bed whenever temperatures reached 30o or higher. Using plastic form liners and colored concrete, Heath artisans imprinted cattails and tall grass blades onto cast-in-place concrete walls. With additives in the concrete to allow for cold weather placement and walls wrapped in blankets to maintain warmth for initial cure, they were able to build on schedule even during extremely cold weather. Finally, the massive walls were backfilled until only 3 or 4 feet remained above ground.
After careful engineering and construction of bridge abutments through bone-chilling temperatures, Heath Superintendent John Raycraft and his team cheered when operators lifted the new 80-foot bridge in one piece from its hauling rig and took only six minutes to fit it precisely onto its concrete abutments.
Once fast water returned to the river, Heath crews turned their attention to building a park complex across 48.5 acres of higher ground. Highlighting and honoring the river, Heath completed this $7.6 million “extreme makeover” (so named by Loveland planners) surrounding its dramatic promenade with wide, curving steps leading to the river’s edge. Preserving only the original steel supports and roof perlins, Heath transformed two livestock barns – once a focal point for the county fair -- into three airy, covered pavilions for play areas, large group picnics, farmers’ market and other community events. The team built a street-course skate park, three picnic structures, four parking lots and four lighted ball parks with dug outs, bleachers and a concession stand. They also constructed the town’s first dog park, a bathroom facility, river-themed children’s playground and delightful water park spraying arcs of water within concentric and overlapping concrete circles.
Heath Construction and subcontractors worked in partnership with BHA Design and City of Loveland planners to build the park envisioned by the people of Loveland. Today the bulk of Heath’s concrete work lies deep beneath the river, forming an immense, stable and enduring foundation for structures that welcome people to gather and play within and beside the friendly shallows of the Big Thompson River.
