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April 28, 2016
SERA Campus
Location: Tacoma
Owner/developer: Metropolitan Park District of Tacoma
Team: Veterans Northwest Construction, general contractor; Belarde Co. and Turnstone Construction, concrete contractor; Bruce Dees & Associates and Land Expressions, architects; AHBL, structural engineer; Holroyd Co., ready-mix supplier
The South End Recreation Area Playground and Sprayground has helped revitalize the park’s South Puget Sound neighborhood.
The park opened in June 2014 and includes over 15,000 square feet of hand-seeded blue glass to create a sparkling water effect.
Belarde Co. was the decorative concrete contractor.
The use of recycled blue glass provides a durable and safe texture for the sprayground surface. The designer, Bruce Dees & Associates, incorporated the existing topography to create a unique appearance that highlights the decorative concrete surface.
Belarde Co. worked closely with the landscape architect to create the flowing wave design.
The major difficulties and challenges included the layout and weather.
With over 9,000 lineal feet of construction, the layout was extremely critical to maintain all standard concrete jointing, doweling and expansion joint practices.
Most of the work was performed during record-setting rainfall and freezing temperatures. Weather protection was extremely difficult for the general contractor.
The project also included an enormous amount of underground utilities. Belarde Co. had to use nonstandard forming techniques to complete the project without damaging the utilities.
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