1031 & 1075 Santa Fe
Hyder Construction & Colorado Ballet
The Challenge
DRS had the pleasure to work on these two renovation projects – the south side addition and renovation of 1075 Santa Fe (the new headquarters of the Colorado Ballet) and the awesome renovation of the historical Amick building at 1031 Santa Fe.
The challenge at this location was in the ground and, as usual, in the budget. The subsurface contained the usual “Denver Miscellaneous Construction Debris” commonly encountered around the seasoned areas of Denver. Below were lenses of tight gravels in alluvium, shallow groundwater, and the Denver formation below.
The Colorado Ballet project was designed with helical piles advanced through the overburden and torqued into bedrock. It was understood that helical installation could be challenging at this location but agreed that it should be attempted from a value engineering perspective – with a switch to a more costly pile system if this proved unsuccessful.
For the Amick restoration, our work involved the installation of piles and anchors for an internal steel frame which allowed for the removal of interior floors and yet to maintain the historical brick façade. Challenge one was to access the installation locations amid the century of debris and load bearing walls. We’ve built our company around that challenge – tight access.
Our Solution
At the Colorado Ballet, we were able to fight most of the helicals through the debris and gravels into bedrock – certainly not with the grace fitting of the future home of the ballet. At four pile locations we had to give in to the gravel lense and switch to micropiles to complete the project. The combination of mostly helical piles and a few micropiles completed the project with a cost saving to the owner vs. an immediate switch to micropiles.
When we worked on the Amick building 5 years after the ballet, we had developed some new installation techniques, and incorporated others developed by AB Chance, to feel confident to stick with a helical pile and anchor approach. We utilized a combination of helix plates and shaft grout to achieve the structural capacities. This approach allowed us to use helix plate combinations more likely to penetrate the hard gravel lenses. Which we successfully complete for all piles and anchors.