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Utility Infielders
Anchor Construction Meets Tight Deadline for Ballpark’s Water Needs
By Greg Thompson
From the 1990s, when ballparks harkened back to the jewel-box style of yesteryear (exposed brick, green seats, quirky dimensions and old-timey facades), to current stadiums with unique innovations, baseball fans have eagerly anticipated each new park. Baseball parks capture the imagination like no other professional sports venue. Many fans have the lifelong dream of watching a game in each major league park; often, the stadium becomes as iconic as the team it hosts. One cannot think of the Chicago Cubs, for example, without thinking of Wrigley Field.
While a new stadium captures the imagination of observers, often overlooked is the infrastructure that must be installed or upgraded to accommodate the increased load demand that such a building requires. Additionally, new stadiums often spark redevelopment of the surrounding neighborhoods, which further increases demand on infrastructure.
When the Montreal Expos relocated to Washington, D.C., in 2004 and were renamed the Washington Nationals, talk immediately began of building a new stadium for the team, but several conflicting agendas mired the project in development purgatory. Eventually, Nationals Park was approved and the $611 million project broke ground in May 2006. The approved schedule called for the park to be ready for Opening Day in late March 2008. The 20-month schedule was abbreviated, to say the least; it was shorter than the typical stadium build by better than four months and the quickest major stadium build in U.S. history.
To accommodate the tight schedule, a number of contractors and sub-contractors became involved with the project, including Washington, D.C., based Anchor Construction Corp.
The National Utility Contractor Association (NUCA) member worked as a subcontractor to Fort Myer construction, installing 4,800 lf of water and 3,900 lf of sewer pipe to provide key infrastructure to the stadium and surrounding neighborhood on an even tighter seven-month schedule. The sewer and water work went to bid in May 2007 and was awarded in July. Anchor crews were on site in late July and had to finish by February 2008. A seven-month schedule for a project of this scope was no simple task in such an old city.
“There were tons of existing utilities in the ground,” explains Anchor Construction’s Chris Odom, project manager for its portion of the build. The stadium is sited on what was previously a warehouse district with utilities in place, but they could not handle the project’s requirements. “Those utilities either had to be relocated, removed or abandoned.”
Odom says this offhandedly, showing the experience Anchor’s crews have developed working in D.C. To be sure, working around a web of existing utilities, active or not, presents a significant challenge. Existing tutilities have been in place for so long that locating them can be guesswork at best, given that the original utility maps may be less than accurate.
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