The reconstruction of Broadway from 16th to 20th Avenues, one of the busiest arterials in the City and County of Denver, required a comprehensive planning, design and construction effort that allowed for the complete replacement of the aging, high maintenance asphalt pavement with 11” concrete. This was accomplished without significant disruption to the downtown business community, residents, visitors, church services, and the traveling public.
Key challenges resolved by the project team:
- Designed an efficient concrete roadway cross-section that met traffic lane needs, improved street drainage and maintained wide sidewalks for pedestrian access.
- Developed and implemented a comprehensive construction traffic control strategy, including hands-on out reach to corridor stakeholders (stake holders were sent weekly updates by e-mail, to maintain smooth traffic flow and pedestrian access during construction.
- Relocated and enhanced a large sculpture that is part of the City and County of Denver’s public art collection.
- Cooperated with the Colorado Department of Transportation to obtain all required environmental clearances, including development of an innovative public information display that served as mitigation for removal of long ago buried trolley tracks.
- Identification, planning and coordination for the protection or relocation of a myriad of underground utilities, many of which were decades old or embedded in the aging asphalt pavement.
- Effective construction sequencing that allowed for five lanes of new concrete pavement and very complex “Y” intersections to be constructed in less than 3 months with minimal disruption to downtown Denver summer festivals.
- Cooperation between Castle Rock Construction and Ready Mixed Concrete to insure placement of 12 hour high early concrete (Class E Concrete) in temperatures approaching 90 degrees.
- Developed construction plans to insure the time span from removal to placement of concrete was no more than 36 hours to minimize the disruption to vehicular and pedestrian traffic.
- Developed construction plans to insure drainage since all sidewalks remained in place.
- Developed a jointing plan which took in to account all existing utilities and parking lanes left in place in both phases of the project.
- Developed a saw cutting and work plan to ensure all saw cutting and work was completed by 7 PM in conformance with Denver’s Noise Ordnance.
- Developed construction plans to insure smooth transitions from concrete to asphalt on the side streets, since all side street asphalt remained in place and was not to be milled and overlaid.
- Developed a plan to seal concrete pavement with such a method to mitigate the dust in the downtown Denver concrete canyons. Water blasting and preformed seal were used to minimize the dust.
- Developed construction plans to build this project on the weekends between Saturday at 7 am to Monday at 5 am with no night work.
- Worked with the churches on Broadway to ensure that no weddings, funerals, homeless meals or church services of any sort were affected.
- Developed a construction plan for the removal of two blocks of asbestos pipe.
This major complex reconstruction project happened and you never heard of it? Then we were successful!
