Guy F. Atkinson Construction
Specialty: Heavy civil
Principal: Guy F. Atkinson, George Atkinson
Year founded: 1927
Local office: Renton
Largest project in 2002: Galer Street Flyover
Washington state is in a transportation funding crisis and heavy civil contractor Guy F. Atkinson Construction is feeling it.
“We’re continuing to see the lack of public investment in infrastructure, particularly with the failure of Referendum 51 and the lack of a plan yet for the (Regional Transportation Investment District),” said Bob Adams, Atkinson’s area vice president.
R-51, which failed spectacularly last November, would have boosted gas taxes to pay for state road projects. The nascent RTID is a plan that allows Pierce, King and Snohomish counties to raise their own taxes for transportation. The three counties have not yet agreed on a plan to submit to voters.
However, Adams is encouraged by the progress Sound Transit, the regional transportation agency, is making.
Atkinson is working on the Northeast Eighth Street portion of the Bellevue Access Project, valued at $14 million. Recently two other phases of that project, which will better connect downtown Bellevue to Interstate 405, were advertised.
Atkinson is also bidding a Sound Transit commuter rail track extension project in Tacoma. Sound Transit has also advertised a number of contracts, worth over $200 million, for construction of its $2.4 billion light rail system.
As for the other big transportation project in the region, the monorail, Adams said, “We hope to participate in some way.”
Currently the firm is working on the $4 million Cedar River Bridge replacement in Renton for King County. It’s also part of the Clark Construction team working on the $250 million expansion of the South Terminal at Sea-Tac Airport.
Adams also serves as president of the Associated General Contractors of Washington and has been spending time down in Olympia monitoring various transportation proposals.
The Washington State Department of Transportation, he said, needs new revenue to get back on track, something that would help Atkinson too.
“Our typical bread and butter client has been, over the years, WSDOT,” Adams said. “And WSDOT is suffering right now.”