G-Block/College Avenue Apartments

When the College Avenue Apartment Deck was constructed in uptown Normal, an area was left un-touched for a future building to be constructed. Stark was awarded this contract to perform key work including sheet pile retention, undercut due to unstable soils, foundation work, storm, sanitary and water service installation, slab, structural steel and slab on metal deck. This project faced several challenges over the course of construction. The jobsite was very constricted as this was the last building to be erected and the footprint was confined to the remaining land available in that space. It was surrounded by streets which in turn, made it necessary for Stark to implement daily lane closures. Another challenge was that this project had a tight time schedule to get the foundations poured during a period in late December/early January when the holidays and weather conditions were a factor. Stark was given 5 – 1/2 weeks to complete this work. As soon as the contract was in hand, Stark immediately began foundation work. Footings began on December 7th 2012, and despite challenges, all foundations were completed ahead of schedule by January 7th. The slab-on-grade was poured on January 11th. The underground crew did a great job managing changes in the field due to unforeseen foundation issues. Stark also completed the structural steel for this project, which was the first time we had done the structural steel for a larger building. By February 2012, concrete slabs were ready and Stark was complete with the G-Block Apartment project. Several issues affected this project including differing site conditions and adjacent building foundations not being shown on the initial design drawings which affected proposed foundations. A lot of time was spent closely working with the architect, structural, and civil engineers to make changes as quickly as possible with no impact to the schedule.