Paris Projects provided comprehensive site work and building design coordination, contractor pre-qualifications, bidding, and contracting and construction management from start to completion. Pre-existing, severe grades and very dense rock made the site development for this project extremely challenging.

We worked with the FAA to relocate large communication towers atop a mountain and then had to blast and cut down to create fill and a flat area for the construction of the project. We managed the new construction of the relocated towers while programming this major work into the overall program schedule. During the initial due diligence and site design, we employed the use of seismology or sound waves, similar to sonar, to help evaluate and determine the amount of anticipated rock blasting and removal that would be necessary so that contractors could estimate how to price and bid the project.

To provide sewer to the site, we obtained a permit from the State DOT to bore the International Highway 26, a federal highway, and then run sewer lines several miles offsite through adjacent neighborhoods. The complex approval process was very time intensive.

We implemented several unique designs and construction methods that saved the project millions of dollars in site work cost. The grading designs required us to blast over 500,000 cy of rock. In addition to using the rock in deep fills, we helped the contractor to set up a rock-crushing plant on-site and used our on-site rock for paving and building pad stone that would otherwise have had to be hauled to the site, one truckload at a time, from an off-site quarry. Our work resulted in huge savings in cost and time.

Halfway through the project, Lowe's Home Improvements expressed interest in building on the site. We did not, however, have enough room to shoehorn them on the end of the site without constructing retaining walls over 90' high—which would again costs millions of dollars. We worked with the geotechnical and wall engineer and came up with a roadway/highway construction technique to once again utilize the massive on-site rock to construct what is called “rock buttress” construction. Basically, the rock was used as a massive gravity wall that allowed us to delete the retaining walls entirely, while adding enough developable area to add the 116,000 sf Lowe's to the overall project pro forma.

I'm convinced any developer would've found these challenges quite formidable; however, this project has become very profitable for the owner.